by David Stern
The Vulcan ran quickly, as quietly as he could, back to the point of intersection, where he and the others had turned. He flattened himself against the wall and then peered quickly back the way they had come.
Hardin stood in the middle of the corridor, studying her tricorder.
“Lieutenant?”
She looked up, startled. “Mr. Spock. Sorry, sir.” She jogged up to him. “Thought I picked an alert from Galileo. An automated signal. Someone trying to break in.”
“I detected no such signal.”
“No, sir. I was wrong.”
Spock nodded. “Indeed. Your concern for the shuttle’s security is admirable. But your primary responsibility, Lieutenant, is the captain’s safety. Should you detect a similar alert, please bring it to my attention before acting on the matter.”
“Sorry, sir. My apologies.”
The ship suddenly shook again.
“Mr. Spock!”
The Vulcan turned.
Captain Pike, the Orion female just behind him, was standing in the corridor a dozen meters away.
“You all right?”
“Yes, sir. We both are.”
“Then let’s move, please.”
Two minutes later, they’d reached their destination, a shuttlebay that had apparently been converted into some sort of laboratory, although the need for the lab’s temperature to be maintained at what Spock estimated was the rough equivalent of zero degrees Celsius escaped him.
The chamber’s only occupants were a group of Orions dressed in heavyweight lab coats—scientists, Spock presumed. One of them broke off from the others and started walking toward them as they entered.
“What’s the meaning of this?” The scientist, a female, was speaking to the girl. “Who are these people? You should know better than to—”
“I’m Christopher Pike. Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise. ”
The scientist stopped and stared at him. “You are dead.”
“So they tell me.” The captain turned toward the girl. “Where’s the image projector?”
“There.”
She pointed across the shuttlebay. Spock’s gaze followed her outstretched arm and came to rest on a small white metal pedestal, on top of which, balanced on a cone of blue light, rested a white, perfectly shaped sphere, perhaps thirty centimeters in diameter.
“What are you doing?” the female scientist asked, again speaking to Deleen.
“None of your concern. Please.” Lieutenant Hardin stepped forward, phaser in hand. “Back away.”
“Mr. Spock. Could you …” Pike gestured toward the sphere—Spock, though, was already heading for it.
As he drew closer, he saw that the sphere was not, as he had first supposed, solid white in color. It was instead made of some sort of transluscent material, largely opaque. He took out his tricorder.
The blue cone of light supporting the sphere was a magnetic field of some kind, acting in some way to nullify the artificial gravity of the ship. It was a far more precisely calibrated gravitational field than that of the vessel, keeping within a deviation of point-zero-one nanowebers, as opposed to the three percent deviation allowed under standard Federation construction specifications. Which were, he suspected, by both convention and necessity, roughly equivalent to those aboard this ship.
As for the sphere itself … the tricorder could tell him nothing about it. The object was not only opaque in appearance but opaque to his sensors.
“Fascinating.”
“You think it’s capable of doing what she says?” Pike asked.
“There is no way to be certain. Clearly, it is an artifact produced by a civilization whose technological capacity in many ways surpasses our own; as for its exact function, however—”
“Spock.” The captain seemed annoyed.
“Yes, sir?”
“A simple yes or no is what I’m looking for.”
Ah. Brevity. Of course. “Then yes.”
“Good. Is it safe to take it off that thing?”
“To remove the sphere? Uncertain.”
Pike turned in the direction of the Orion scientists; perhaps one of them …
His eyes fell on the female scientist, who was backing toward the door.
“Lieutenant.”
Even before he spoke, Hardin had her weapon out. “Stop right there,” the security officer said, and motioned the scientist back toward the rest of them.
Curious, Spock thought.
The lieutenant had seemed, for a moment, to be preoccupied with something else.
Boyce was a good twenty meters behind Kritos when they made the final turn toward the medical wing.
The Klingon had his weapon out in front of him; Boyce braced himself for the sound of weapons fire. None came.
A second later, as he made that final turn himself, he saw why.
The Orion guards—there were two of them—lay sprawled out in front of the entrance, each flat on his back. Kritos was kneeling down next to one of them, his hand on the guard’s neck.
He looked up at Boyce and got to his feet. “Dead,” the Klingon grunted.
Boyce’s eyes widened in surprise. I will handle the guards. Hoto, apparently, was as good as her word. A little too much so, frankly, for his taste.
He looked around, wondering where she was.
“The door is locked.”
“Zeph-zeph-gamma.”
“What?”
“Here. I’ll do it.” Boyce stepped forward; Kritos stepped aside.
Boyce punched in the code and stepped through into the medical wing. Kritos was a step behind.
Lieutenant Hoto stood directly in front of them. She was holding a weapon in her hand, an Orion energy blaster. That explained the guards.
“You are Captain Kritos.”
“Yes, I am Kritos. Which way, Doctor?” The Klingon snapped. “Hurry.”
“There,” he pointed.
Straight ahead, he had been about to say, but the words died on his lips.
Behind Hoto, Boyce could see the door to the treatment room that housed Druzen was wide open. He could also see the Klingon in it—or part of him, anyway. His arm, hanging limply off the bed.
He looked back at Hoto.
She was looking at him, too. She had not, Boyce realized, lowered her weapon.
There was something wrong here.
Kritos realized it as well. Out of the corner of his eye, Boyce saw the Klingon begin to raise his own weapon.
Hoto fired first. Her blaster was set at full power. It hit Kritos square on, directly in the chest, sent the massive Klingon warrior hurtling backward into the wall.
The speed with which he hit it, the way his body crumpled to the floor after impact … He was not getting back up again.
“What the hell—why did you—” The doctor had taken a step forward himself. He stopped.
Hoto had the blaster on him now. “The data card, please, Doctor.”
“What?”
“The data card I gave you earlier. I assume you were able to obtain the information we discussed from the Orion laboratory …”
“No.” He’d forgotten all about it. He felt it in his pocket now, right next to the vial of irradiated gamina-B.
“Unfortunate.” Hoto shook her head. “Still, not a tragedy.”
“Mind telling me what’s going on?” Boyce asked. “Why you just did that?”
“He was a Klingon,” Hoto said.
“He was working with us. He saved Captain Pike.”
“Klingons cannot be trusted. It is a fact. Besides which …” The lieutenant shrugged. “There will be a formal declaration of war shortly. I am merely, you might say, getting a head start on things.”
“There’s not going to be a war,” Boyce said. “When Starfleet Command finds out who was really behind the attack—”
“That proof will not reach Starfleet Command, I’m afraid.”
Hoto raised the weapon higher, till it was in her line of sight. Then, keeping an eye on Bo
yce and her index finger on the trigger, she used her thumb to adjust the controls.
Boyce’s heart thudded in his chest. “Going to kill me, too?” he asked.
Hoto shook her head. “No. You saved my life, Doctor. I intend to return the kindness.”
“Sweet of you.”
“You should remain here, though, upon awakening. Within the medical wing. It is the most solidly constructed portion of the ship. It should retain atmospheric integrity long enough to permit your rescue.”
Her finger tightened on the trigger; Boyce opened his mouth to protest, to ask again what she was doing and why, who she really was, who she was really working for . . .
And then he saw the blast.
And then he saw nothing.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The ship shook again.
Pike, who had the image projector—the white sphere—clasped tightly in both hands, wobbled on his feet for a second.
“You all right, sir?”
That came from Hardin, who now had her back to the shuttlebay wall, presumably so she could keep an eye on everyone in the laboratory. The captain didn’t see the need; they were all—humans, Orions, and Vulcans alike—gathered in a circle around one of the data terminals.
“Fine,” Pike said. For the moment, he might have added. Much longer than that, he didn’t know about.
Karkon’s Wing seemed to be shaking itself apart.
Where the hell was Boyce? And Kritos? And Hoto?
He turned to the girl, Deleen, standing right behind him.
“The medical wing was how far?”
“Less distance than we had to travel.”
Damn. They ought to have checked in by now.
“The system rejects my queries as well.” One of the Orion scientists spoke now—the one the others had all gathered around, the one sitting at the data terminal everyone’s attention was focused on. “I cannot even look at the code to see what has changed.”
Pike looked over at his science officer, who was standing behind the terminal as well, hands clasped behind his back, face impassive. “Spock.” Pike gestured toward the terminal. “Can you help, or …”
“I intend to,” the Vulcan said. “As soon as I can contribute productively.”
Pike was about to ask what exactly that meant, when a barely audible electronic chirp sounded nearby. It took him a second to recognize what the sound was and where it was coming from. His tricorder.
“Hold this,” he said, handing the sphere to Deleen. Just as he did so, the chirp stopped.
Frowning, Pike opened up his tricorder and looked at the display indicator.
“Problem, sir?” Hardin was looking at him.
“Not sure. Galileo ’s security alarm went off for a second but then stopped on its own.”
“Someone trying to break in?” the lieutenant asked.
“Maybe,” Pike said.
“It could have been Kritos and the others returning to the shuttle.”
“Then why aren’t they answering their communicators?”
“Could be some kind of interference,” Hardin suggested. “I could go there myself, secure the sphere, see what’s happening.”
Pike shook his head. “No. I’m not splitting us up again without knowing more about what’s going on.”
“Yes, sir,” Hardin replied.
“You can’t leave,” Deleen said. “At least, not until I speak with—see—Dr. Boyce again.”
“Boyce?” Pike frowned. “Why?”
The girl hesitated.
The bay, all at once, plunged into complete darkness.
Spock used the darkness to contemplate what he had seen so far of the methods Lieutenant Hoto had used to sabotage the Orion vessel’s power grid. A very effective series of planned overloads, which used the artificial-intelligence routines built into the system against themselves.
He had made, he believed, significant progress toward conceptualizing effective countermeasures against those programmed outages. The Vulcan needed now to trace the disruptions back to their beginning, to see the initial malicious piece of code the lieutenant had inserted into the system. A few more minutes’ work, he suspected, and he would be ready to assist the Orions in regaining control of their vessel.
If the ship stayed intact that long.
The lights came back on. The terminal in front of him, though, on which he’d been monitoring the Orion scientists’ efforts to trace and neutralize the damages Lieutenant Hoto had inflicted on their ship—that stayed dark.
“Connection to the mainframe is gone.” The scientist who had been sitting in front of the terminal—a female whose name, Spock gathered, was Zandar—stood. “We need to find a working access point to the mainframe.”
“Or the mainframe itself,” suggested one of the other scientists.
“The command center.” Zandar nodded. “That may be the best course of action.”
“Where is the command center?” Spock asked.
“That way.” Zandar pointed to the chamber ceiling. “Almost directly above us. Three levels.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” the captain said. “Let’s go.”
Extenuating circumstances.
Pike had dismissed Boyce’s earlier comment the instant the doctor had said it. What on earth could possibly excuse what had taken place at Starbase 18? But if even half of what Deleen had been telling him was true, the discoveries that had been made at Zai Romeen, this serum whose secrets the doctor had supposedly unraveled at last … There was more to what was happening here, what had been happening aboard this vessel for the last three-quarters of a century, than met the eye.
The port turbolift was out; the starboard one still seemed to be working. They took it to the command center, which was roughly equivalent in size and layout to Enterprise ’s bridge. The focus of activity was a series of terminals at the front of the room. A half-dozen Orions in military uniform gathered around those terminals, looking simultaneously harried, frantic, and helpless.
Liyan was standing a few paces back from them, the expression on her face much the same.
“Halt!” The voice came from behind him; Pike turned and saw not a guard but an older Orion male, hand weapon drawn and aimed at them.
There were guards stationed at the back of the command center; a split-second later, they had their weapons drawn as well.
By then, Liyan had turned around, and Pike got his first good look at her. He saw now that at least part of what the girl had been telling him was true. The tallith was not well.
She had changed drastically in the few days since Pike had first seen her; she looked pale to his eye and diminished somehow. Not so much shrunken in size as in force and personality …
Pheromones.
“Captain Christopher Pike. Should I be surprised to see you alive?” The tallith shook her head. “I suppose not, given your history. You’ve come to gloat, I assume. To celebrate your survival and my destruction.”
“Gloat?” Pike shook his head. “Not at all.”
“Talk to him.” The girl at his side took a step forward. “Mother—”
“Talk?” Liyan’s face twisted up in anger. “Please. Do not be so naïve, daughter. Talk is unnecessary. Actions are what matters, and your actions, Captain Pike, speak for themselves. Your plan has worked. Your spy has destroyed my ship.”
“My plan?” Pike shook his head. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“You lie!” Liyan practically spat out the words; the muscles on her neck stood out like cords against her skin. No. Those weren’t muscles. They were her veins, Pike saw.
“Lieutenant Hoto is no spy,” he said. “She’s just—”
“Sorry to interrupt, sir.” The words came from Lieutenant Hardin. “But I’ve got to correct you on that.”
Pike turned around to see Hardin holding her phaser up to the side of Deleen’s head.
“Lieutenant.” He was utterly flabbergasted. “What are you doing?”
“Well.”
Hardin’s eyes glittered. “I suppose you could say I was seeing to the security of the Federation, Captain.”
Pike shook his head. He had no idea what she was talking about. “Put that weapon down, Lieutenant Hardin. Now.”
“Can’t do that, sir. Lieutenant Hoto might not have been your spy, Captain. But she was mine. Or rather—”
“Starfleet Intelligence.” Spock took a step forward. “The feedback circuit Chief Pitcairn detected. That was you.”
Hardin nodded. “That’s right. The situation seemed to call for it.”
“Situation?” It took Pike a second to figure it out. “Black Snow. The cloaking device. Is that what this is about?”
“Klingons get a weapon like that working, Captain, it changes the balance of power. Drastically.”
“You’re going to steal the shuttle.”
Hardin’s smile was answer enough.
“You can’t do that, Lieutenant,” Pike said. “I made Captain Kritos a promise—”
“Captain Kritos doesn’t enter into the equation anymore.”
Pike didn’t need to hear her speak the words to know what she meant.
He felt a slow rage beginning to boil inside him. “Kritos saved my life. I owed him—”
“I’m sorry, sir. Truly I am.”
“Dr. Boyce,” Spock said. “Have you killed him as well?”
“Dr. Boyce is fine.”
“And where is he?”
“Ship’s medical wing, I believe.”
Hardin’s communicator beeped. Using her free hand, she flipped it open. “Ready,” she said, keeping her eyes focused straight ahead, the phaser pressed tightly to the back of Deleen’s skull.
“Acknowledged,” a voice replied.
Pike recognized it at once. So did Spock.
“That is Lieutenant Hoto.” The Vulcan’s expression came as close to betraying surprise as the captain had ever seen.
Hardin smiled. “Stand by,” she said, and closed the communicator.
“She is aboard Galileo. ”
“She is.”
“A traitor as well, then,” Spock said.
Hardin’s expression, for the first time, betrayed something other than calm. It gave Pike a second’s worth of satisfaction. “That’s debatable,” Hardin said.
“I think not,” Spock said. “Your actions betray the ideals of the Federation as well as the officers who trusted you.”