Star Trek: Typhon Pact 02: Seize the Fire

by Michael A. Martin

  Will obviously wanted to continue the conversation with S’syrixx, but Troi could see immediately that this wasn’t to be—at least not at the moment. First, Ree’s exhausted Gorn patient appeared to have once again lapsed into unconsciousness. And second, an angry Dr. Ree was insisting, in guttural, growling tones that brooked no argument, that everyone except essential, care-providing personnel had better exit his sickbay now.

  Out in the corridor beyond the main sickbay entrance, Troi reached out to touch her husband’s arm, bringing him to a stop. Though he showed only the most subtle of outward signs, it was clear to her that he was in a state of emotional upheaval.

  “Will, what’s wrong?” she asked quietly, so as not to be overheard by any of the various Titan personnel who were walking past them in either direction along the curved corridor.

  “Besides the obvious?” he said. “Besides the fact that we now know for sure just how dangerous that ancient artifact is?”

  “At least we don’t have to speculate about the device’s purpose anymore.”

  “At least there’s that,” Will said, leading the way to the nearest turbolift as Ensign Rynaph and Chief Urkral hastened past, both radiating waves of discomfiture that even Will must have felt. Troi had rarely seen the Saurian engineer’s large webbed feet carry her across so much distance so quickly.

  It was obvious that neither Rynaph nor Urkral were eager to speak with Troi or the captain at the moment, no doubt because of the tense near-confrontation they had both just witnessed in sickbay. Troi turned her head in time to see Lieutenant Qontallium from security walking away from sickbay in the opposite direction, thereby avoiding her and Will entirely; the retreating Gnalish radiated a sense of relief that the captain hadn’t pushed Ree far enough to force him to choose between Ree’s authority under the Starfleet medical regs and Will’s authority as Titan’s CO.

  She made a mental note to speak with all three of the reptiloid crewmembers at her earliest opportunity; after all, they had done everything possible to make S’syrixx feel comfortable, in the hope of making him more cooperative than he might have been away from any remotely kindred faces. Troi knew she might need to call upon them to do so again soon—particularly if Will treated S’syrixx’s formal request with all the seriousness it would seem to merit.

  Mentally filing all of that away for later, Troi turned toward Will and said, “So we’re back to the obvious—the obvious being the fact that an entire civilization could be reduced to atoms without so much as a moment’s notice.”

  They came to a stop in front of the turbolift, whose doors slid obediently open to admit them. A moment later, they were alone together as the lift began to carry them toward the bridge.

  “I’m glad that much is obvious,” Will said. “It’s too bad that the solution to the problem isn’t equally obvious.”

  Using her most soothing counselor tones, Troi said, “S’syrixx might hold the key to that solution, Will.”

  “Unless he’s actually a Gorn saboteur. A tactical weapon fired at us by Captain Krassrr.”

  “He’s requested asylum, Will. You can’t just ignore that.”

  During the silence that followed, she could feel the tension that was tearing at him, an almost tangible emotional torque. On the one hand, he had to protect his ship and crew in a perilous region of deep Beta Quadrant space that was certain to grow even more perilous the longer Titan remained in it; the prize for staying could be a miracle technology that might heal a Borg-ravaged Federation almost overnight. On the other hand, an entire civilization—a Prime Directive “hands-off” civilization at that—was in imminent danger of receiving a summary death sentence.

  And the solution to one problem might bring a catastrophic resolution to the other.

  “What are you going to do, Will?” Troi said as the turbolift doors opened onto Titan’s bustling bridge.

  He paused briefly on the threshold and smiled at her. “I won’t ignore S’syrixx’s request, Deanna. I know which side of caution I have to err on.”

  She nodded and returned his smile as they made their way to the center of the bridge, though she experienced no relief upon hearing his decision. After all, she had never believed he would willingly send a refugee back into the hands—or the claws—of his would-be killers; she had never doubted his core humanity.

  Christine Vale vacated the center seat, exchanging it for the one to her immediate right as Will assumed his place in the very heart of Titan’s bridge. Troi took her customary seat to Will’s left as he brought Vale up to speed about S’syrixx’s urgent request.

  “Captain, has anybody told our Gorn guest yet about your decision to grant him asylum?” Vale asked.

  Will shook his head. “I thought I’d send Deanna down to do that in a few minutes. Or else have Ree handle it.”

  “Can I make a recommendation?” Vale said.

  “Shoot,” Will said with a nod.

  “There’s no regulation that says you have to tell him right away, is there?”

  Will shrugged and looked to Troi for help. She returned the shrug. “None that I’m aware of,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because being kept waiting on tenterhooks overnight might make him a little more cooperative,” said Vale. “You know, wondering whether he’s going to get to stay aboard this nice comfy starship, or whether he’ll be zipped out of one of Captain Krassrr’s airlocks again.”

  Will seemed to mull that thought over for a few seconds before he consented with an unhappy nod. He turned toward Troi. “Let him know first thing in the morning,” he said.

  Troi nodded. “You’re still uneasy about having S’syrixx aboard,” she said.

  “Or maybe I’m just uneasy about my own . . . parochial reaction to him,” he said.

  “What do you mean, Captain?” Vale asked.

  With a weary sigh, he leaned his bearded chin on his fist. “It’s just that it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m about to let a poisonous serpent loose in Titan’s garden.”

  11

  Vale had always made a point of being the first to arrive at morning staff meetings whenever the relentless exigencies of her executive-officer duties didn’t make it impossible. As she walked briskly through the doors to the observation lounge, she noticed that it was already oh-six-five-five hours, a fact that made her feel almost tardy. The doors parted to admit her and she was mildly surprised to find Captain Riker and Commander Troi already in their customary seats at the broad, round table that was framed by the observation windows’ view of Titan’s bow and the star-bejeweled darkness beyond.

  “I just received a very interesting upload from sickbay, Chris,” Riker said as he tapped the controls of a small padd he had laid on the table. She was relieved to see that he seemed better rested this morning than he had at the previous senior staff meeting. Perhaps the unexpected arrival of Titan’s Gorn “guest” had been a game-changer for him. She could only hope that whatever action the altered circumstances might lead him to take against the Gorn wouldn’t trap the ship and crew in a deadly no-win scenario.

  “Something from our visitor?” Vale asked as she sat at the table. As on the bridge, she took the seat to Riker’s immediate right.

  “Mister S’syrixx appears to have been burning the midnight oil to give us information about the Hranrarii,” Troi said. “Not to mention some beautiful artwork. It certainly looks like an act of good faith to me.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Riker said as he continued scrolling through the contents of the padd. “It might even turn out to be useful.”

  “We’ll see,” Vale said noncommittally as he slid the padd toward her. She wasted no time picking it up and examining the surprisingly detailed table of contents of the document in question.

  “I’ve just finished uploading everything on that padd into the senior staff’s general database,” the captain said while Vale continued skimming the data. “Deanna and I will walk everybody through what we know about the particulars d
uring the briefing.”

  Though she was scrolling through the material quickly, Vale couldn’t help but be impressed. What S’syrixx had composed was nothing short of a comprehensive monograph about Vela OB2–404 II and the biology and civilization of the planet’s inhabitants. Despite its stilted language—doubtless an artifact of having been drafted in the Gorn tongue and subsequently machine-translated into Federation Standard—the document looked to be quite the achievement, especially considering the fact that its author had had only a few scant hours to assemble it.

  “Looks like your instincts were spot-on, Chris,” Riker said. “Keeping our guest waiting seems to have motivated him quite a bit.”

  Vale grinned. “You can blame my cop background. I simply harnessed the positive power of uncertainty and worry.”

  Instead of returning her good humor, Riker regarded her with a vaguely pained expression—which she also saw mirrored, if only involuntarily, on Troi’s usually placid features.

  Ouch, Vale thought, recalling just how much extreme “uncertainty and worry” that she, Troi, and the entire crew of the Enterprise-E had experienced after Riker’s capture by Kinchawn, the mad prime minister of the planet Tezwa. Vale knew that Kinchawn’s tender mercies had taken Riker to the absolute limits of human endurance, if not farther. The torments the Tezwan dictator had inflicted on Riker had demonstrated graphically that whatever might create uncertainty and worry could easily glide down a slippery slope that ends at terror, torture, or even murder.

  On the other hand, Vale’s law-enforcement experience had taught her long ago that Samuel Johnson had made an excellent point with his observation that nothing focused the mind quite like an impending hanging. And the punctiliously cooperative Gorn down in sickbay still had no assurance that he wasn’t about to end up at the end of Johnson’s metaphorical rope.

  Vale was grateful when the observation-deck doors suddenly distracted her from this train of thought. The brief pneumatic hissing heralded the arrival of Commanders Tuvok, Ra-Havreii, and Keru, who were followed moments later by Dr. Ree and Commander Pazlar.

  Vale was pleased to see that Pazlar had walked into the meeting room with the assistance of a contra-gravity suit instead of simply manifesting in the room as a remotely generated apparition via Titan’s omnipresent holoemitter network. Good for you, Melora, she thought. For a while there you were on your way to becoming a stellar-cartography-lab shut-in. She wondered whether Pazlar’s ambiguous romantic relationship with Chief Engineer Ra-Havreii was in any way involved in the science officer’s new found positivity.

  “We appear to owe our guest, Mister S’syrixx, a debt of thanks,” Riker said, addressing the room once everyone had finished settling into their seats. “Thanks to him, we now know a hell of a lot more about Vela OB2–404 II—or Hranrar—than we did before. Including the likely fate of the planet and its people if something isn’t done on their behalf, and soon.”

  “That is assuming, of course, that Mister S’syrixx is being forthright with us,” Tuvok said, his fingers steepled before him.

  “I’ve seen no indication so far that he’s told us anything but the truth,” said Troi.

  At least the truth as he understands it, Vale thought, though she kept her doubts to herself for the moment to forestall a potentially time-wasting debate. The last thing she wanted was for anyone, even Troi, to try to intellectualize away her legitimate doubts.

  Vale watched Troi turn toward Dr. Ree. “Doctor, what is Mister S’syrixx’s condition this morning?”

  “I’m pleased to report that my patient is much improved, Counselor,” said the physician. “Save, of course, for his rather acute anxieties, which are perfectly understandable under the present circumstances.”

  “I’ve heard a little bit about Mister S’syrixx’s ‘anxieties,’” said Ra-Havreii, his mild amusement not at all obscured by his drooping white mustachios. “Is it true that he’s upset mainly because he’s cooped up on a starship full of biologically objectionable life-forms?”

  “My patient has exhibited a certain . . . reticence around placental mammals,” Ree said as he nodded his great velociraptor head. “However, I believe his decision to seek asylum among those selfsame mammals may be a sign that he is learning to overcome some of his ingrained fears.”

  Vale shrugged. “It could also be a sign that he now thinks that living among beings that his culture has labeled as bogeymen is his best choice out of a very bad set of options. After all, his own people gave him the heave-ho straight out of one of their airlocks. Almost any alternative to going back to them must look pretty attractive to him.”

  For an absurd moment, she wondered whether anyone had considered sending Crewman Chaka down to speak with the Gorn, just to see if he also had a thing about spiders.

  “I sincerely hope that the option of staying aboard Titan remains open for him,” Ree said, his tone deferential though his yellow eyes became less so as his gaze fell upon Riker’s.

  The captain nodded. “I’ve decided to honor his asylum request, Doctor.”

  “He’ll be very relieved to hear that, sir,” Ree said. “I’ve been dreading the possibility of having to send him back to Captain Krassrr.”

  “At least we finally have a good idea of why Krassrr dumped Mister S’syrixx into space,” Troi said. “Namely, his affinity for the Hranrarii.”

  “I obviously haven’t had time to really read any of this stuff yet, Counselor,” Vale said. “But I won’t complain if you decide to spoil some of the good parts right now.”

  Troi activated a small keypad on the table before her, and a heartbeat later a half-meter-long holographic representation of the terraforming platform that orbited Hranrar appeared like a genie from a lamp and hovered at approximately eye level over the center of the meeting table. Vale supposed this was another one of the Gorn’s renderings, only displayed in three dimensions.

  “S’syrixx was condemned for sabotaging Krassrr’s terraforming efforts on Hranrar,” she said.

  “So he says,” Vale said, folding her arms across her chest.

  “I’ll grant that I can’t independently verify a lot of what’s in S’syrixx’s report,” said Riker. “But at least this part of his story is consistent with his getting chucked out an airlock.”

  “As well as with the fact that the Gorn flotilla hasn’t yet been able to fully power up Brahma-Shiva,” Troi said. “Much less use it to alter Hranrar’s biosphere.”

  Vale nodded as she recalled the most recent Gorn attempt to power up the device—an effort that ended in a hasty shutdown that could have been accompanied by untold amounts of damage to Brahma-Shiva’s ancient internal systems.

  Riker stroked his beard thoughtfully. “While I’d prefer to interpret the respite the Gorn have given the Hranrarii as evidence that our senior diplomat has shown his people the error of their ways, I can’t ignore reality. Not only haven’t the Gorn withdrawn from the system, they’re still busy trying to do something with that artifact. So the reason they haven’t turned the terraforming tech loose on Hranrar yet isn’t because they’ve decided not to do it, but because they’ve discovered that they can’t. At least for the moment.”

  But Vale was still having trouble buying some of this. “All of which makes our gallant Mister S’syrixx look like quite the hero.”

  “Indeed,” Tuvok said. “He clearly has a strong motivation to furnish you with information designed to lead you to certain self-serving conclusions.”

  Keru nodded. “Hear, hear.”

  A slight frown creased Troi’s forehead as her gaze drifted first to Tuvok, then to Keru, and finally settled upon Vale.

  “Ever since we first encountered Krassrr’s fleet,” Troi said, “I’ve been detecting discord among the Gorn crews, presumably related to the Hegemony’s plan to wipe out and annex Hranrar. It’s obvious that they’re not completely unanimous in their opinions about the Hranrarii. Why is it so hard for you to believe that a Gorn—particularly a non-warrior—might have some
compassion for the plight of an alien race?”

  Vale wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that question; she found it difficult to apply words to the subject, since her objection was admittedly more gut-level than cerebral, more a product of inchoate feeling than of conscious thought. All she knew for certain was that the idea of trusting the Gorn made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention, like a parade ground full of Izarian police cadets.

  “Perhaps it is a biological issue,” Ree ventured into the silence that had followed Troi’s question.

  Vale found that surprising, especially coming from Ree. “Doctor, you’re not saying you think that all Gorn are biologically predisposed toward being violent blockheads?”

  The doctor snorted, as though amused. “Not at all, Commander. I’m merely saying that it is well understood—at least by most of the Federation’s nonhumanoid sentients—that Starfleet’s much-publicized prohibition against xenophobia is a work in progress, at best. It is quite common for Federation humans and humanoids to assume that certain of the ‘softer emotions’ are distinctly mammalian traits.”

  “Pardon me, Doctor,” Keru said, the Trill spots that ringed his face flushing with emotion as he straightened in his chair and glared at the Pahkwa-thanh surgeon. “But that’s the biggest load of mreker droppings I’ve ever heard.”

  “Belay that, Commander!” Vale snapped at Keru, even though she largely agreed with his assessment.

  Ree raised one of his delicate yet deadly looking manus. “I am not offended in the least. I far prefer honest discourse to—what is the term?—‘sugarcoating’ such weighty matters.”

  Vale shrugged and looked toward Riker. The captain nodded back, then nodded at Keru, though he didn’t look pleased by the senior security officer’s turn of phrase.

  “My apologies, everybody,” Keru said. “But this sort of broad-brushing really gets under my skin. I’ve always believed that the Federation’s relations with new species—whether they’re adversaries or prospective new members—were based on practical experience. After all, isn’t that what the whole protracted Federation member-admission process is supposed to be all about? We trust you and your Pahkwathanh countrymen, Doctor, because you have proved yourselves to be trustworthy. The same can be said of the natives of any Federation member world.”