Star Trek: The Children of Kings

by David Stern

  “Ben Tuval, for one,” Pike added.

  Hardin glared. “These bastards killed Ben Tuval. Along with eighty-seven other people.”

  “Stop this, Lieutenant,” Pike said. “Here and now. Before it’s too late.”

  The ship, as if on cue, shook again.

  “Might already be too late, sir. I do hope you figure out how to stop the ship from blowing up.”

  “Thanks for your good wishes,” Pike said.

  Hardin took a step back. “You’re welcome. Now,” she said, “about those eighty-seven deaths …”

  Her hand on the phaser tensed. The weapon began to swing around.

  In that instant, Pike realized her intent, and he moved, too.

  He hurled himself toward Liyan.

  The captain heard the sound of weapons fire—the familiar sound of a Starfleet phaser, then the barely audible buzz of an Orion energy blaster, more than one, somewhere nearby, the sound of a turbolift door opening and shutting—

  And then he heard a scream. The girl. Deleen.

  Pike caught the tallith by the knees and took her to the ground.

  Even as she fell, though, Pike knew he was already too late.

  TWENTY-NINE

  There was a buzzing in his ear. A loud buzzing. Boyce wanted it to go away; all he wanted to do was sleep. Sleep for a hundred years. His head was pounding, like the worst hangover he’d ever had in his life, like the hangovers he used to get back on Argelius, those first few weeks after it became clear that the treatment hadn’t gone exactly as planned. That something was wrong with Jaya and the others. Bad blood, bad DNA.

  Bad headache.

  The buzzing wouldn’t go away, though. In fact, it was getting louder. The buzzing, he realized, was somebody’s voice.

  “Boyce. Doctor. Boyce. Phil. Come on. Where are you? Boyce. We need you …”

  The voice sounded awfully familiar to him all at once. It sounded like Captain Pike. Of course, that couldn’t be; Captain Pike was dead. The Orions. They’d—

  The doctor sat up.

  He was lying exactly where he’d fallen; so was Kritos. The door to the medical wing was wide open.

  It all came rushing back.

  “Boyce. Come on, where are you …”

  Captain Pike’s voice was coming from a comm panel set in the corridor wall. Boyce ran to it.

  “Boyce. Dr. Boyce. Phil …”

  “Captain.”

  “Phil. Good to hear your voice. The command center. You have to get up here right away.”

  “The command center. Right.” He was still a little woozy. He wobbled on his feet for a second.

  “Dr. Boyce,” the captain snapped. “You there?”

  “Right here, sir. Captain, I’ve got to tell you. Lieutenant Hoto—”

  “Never mind about Hoto. I know about Hoto. Just get up here. On the double.”

  “Yes, sir.

  The comm went silent.

  The command center. That was up, Boyce recalled. Top of the ship. Just like the bridge on Enterprise.

  The doctor emerged from the turbolift into a scene of absolute madness. Sparking consoles, some of them billowing smoke. A cacophony of voices. A body lying in the middle of the floor.

  He realized it was Liyan. The tallith.

  Deleen was there, too, holding her mother’s head in her lap. She glanced up at Boyce as he entered.

  “There they are. That’s them.”

  He heard the captain’s voice and turned.

  Pike was leaning over the shoulder of one of Liyan’s officers, pointing at the display screen.

  “There was nothing there a second ago.” The officer, a female, shook her head. “Systems failure. There must be a problem with the sensors—”

  “There’s no problem,” Pike said. “That’s the cloaking device. They’re trying to figure out how it works, make the adjustments so that they stay hidden when they go to warp. Do you have weapons?”

  “No.” The officer shook her head once more. “We don’t even have atmosphere control anymore. The next big hull rupture, and—”

  “Doctor.” Pike spotted him and straightened up.

  Boyce started forward. “Sir, Lieutenant Hoto—she . . .”

  “It’s not just Hoto. It’s Hardin, too. They’re working together. Starfleet Intelligence.” Boyce barely had time to absorb that bit of news before Pike stepped forward and took his arm. “Come here. We need your help.”

  He led the doctor down to the lower level of the command center, where Spock and a group of Orions were standing around a console, watching Zandar work.

  “That’s not it, either.” Zandar stared at the screen, frustration obvious in her voice. “Whatever encryption protocol she used—”

  “I don’t think she used an encryption at all. I think the interface is malfunctioning, too. The code we’re seeing here is not the code she entered.”

  Pike pushed forward, through the group, dragging Boyce with him. “Spock.”

  The Vulcan—the only person on the bridge who seemed not even the slightest bit perturbed by the calamity unfolding around them—turned.

  “Dr. Boyce. Good. Can you please recall exactly what Lieutenant Hoto said to you regarding the manner in which she planned to sabotage this vessel?”

  “What she said.”

  “Yes. Her exact language, if you can recall it.”

  Boyce thought a moment. “She said the conduits were stressed. She was going to overload them.”

  “Interesting.” Spock, hands clasped behind his back, nodded. “What else?”

  “I don’t know.” How long had it been since he and Hoto had that conversation? How many days, hours, ago?

  “Dr. Boyce?” Spock prompted. “What else?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  The ship shook.

  “Explosive decompression on Deck Two, Sector Twelve,” a voice announced from somewhere.

  “The lab.” Boyce turned quickly and saw Deleen—who still sat on the floor, cradling the tallith’s body; he had almost forgotten about her entirely—looking up at him, the sadness in her eyes even more pronounced. “Gozen. The hull fragments …”

  “Boyce!” That was the captain; the doctor turned and saw Spock and Pike standing side-by-side, looking at him expectantly.

  “The destruction was going to occur in stages,” Boyce said. “The conduits were stressed; she was going to overload them.”

  “We need to abandon ship. Commander Gorlea.” Behind Spock, Zandar stood up, shaking her head. “I can’t vouch for hull integrity much more than another few minutes.”

  “Abandon ship.” The gray-haired Orion officer, who had been standing near Deleen, now moved toward the middle of the command center, toward the command chair Liyan had vacated. “That is not a viable option. The number of passengers our shuttles can carry—”

  “We can summon the Singhino, sir. Warlord Videl.” That came from another of the Orions, a male officer who had been among those crowded around Zandar. “Ask for his assistance.”

  “Assistance? From the Singhino?” Gorlea shook his head. “I’m not sure many of us would survive that.”

  “More than would survive the ship exploding into a million pieces,” the same officer replied.

  “Doctor.” Spock again; Boyce now detected a tone of urgency in his voice. “Anything at all you can remember?”

  “The power grid. She said something about setting up a reaction in the power grid.”

  “The power grid,” Spock said.

  “Yes.” Boyce closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to remember the exact phrase she’d used. Phrase.

  That rang a bell.

  “Phase cascade reaction,” Boyce said. “That was what she was doing. Setting up a phase cascade reaction. She said the ship’s systems were already operating close to overload.”

  Spock nodded. “Phase cascade reaction. Interesting terminology. Not only does it suggest the self-perpetuating series of malfunctions we are witnessing, but it
also is reminiscent of a famous series of power-flow equations which—”

  “Spock.” The captain pointed toward the now-vacant chair where Zandar had been sitting. “If you know something, or even think you know something, I think now—”

  “Yes, sir,” the Vulcan said, and took a seat. He flexed his fingers and regarded the console.

  Pike regarded him. “Spock …”

  “A moment, sir.”

  “I’m not sure that we have a moment.”

  “Precipitous action on my part would be as bad as none, sir. Possibly worse. The consequences—”

  “Human! Captain Pike!” The voice came from the back of the command center, from the female at the console the captain had been leaning over when Boyce first arrived.

  The doctor—along with everyone else—turned toward that voice.

  “Your shuttlecraft,” the female said. “They are powering up for warp.”

  Pike’s heart thudded in his chest.

  Galileo, going to warp. Black Snow, in the hands of Starfleet Intelligence.

  A week or so ago, he would have thought it a good thing. Now, though … he couldn’t let it happen.

  Kritos had saved his life; Kritos had made it possible for them to get there in Galileo, to try to stop a war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. The one thing he’d asked of Pike in return was to promise that the captain would not try to acquire the secrets of the cloaking device for Starfleet. Pike had sworn he would do all in his power to prevent that from happening.

  Maybe Kritos was dead, but that promise still held.

  He looked back over at his science officer. “Spock . . .”

  The Vulcan looked up at Zandar. “Can you access the ship’s power grid for me, please?”

  “The power grid?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what good that’ll do at this point, but …”

  He pushed back from the console; she leaned in.

  Her fingers flew across the keypad. “There you are.”

  “Thank you.”

  Spock leaned forward. He flexed his fingers; he pointed his right index finger. He touched it quickly to the screen and just as quickly drew it back.

  “Spock,” Pike said. “Whatever you’re going to do . . .”

  The Vulcan looked up at him. “That is all I can do at the moment, sir.”

  Pike—trying not to let his disappointment show—nodded. “All right. Then let’s—”

  The ship shuddered again, a different kind of shudder. A kind of bump, which was accompanied by a low-pitched rumble that hiccoughed once and then smoothed out. The lights came back on, all at once. Full power.

  “But I think that should be sufficient,” Spock said.

  The captain looked around the bridge. Not only were the lights on, but the bridge displays—half of which had been dimmed or flickering a second earlier—had come back to life.

  “Nice work,” Pike said.

  Spock nodded.

  “Grid is operational again on Decks One, Two, and part of Three,” a voice announced. “We have communications. Atmospheric control—”

  “Weapons.” Pike turned away from Spock, back toward the main portion of the command center. “Do you have weapons control?”

  “We do.”

  He glared at the viewscreen, which now showed an image of the surrounding space and a small silver dot which the captain could only assume was Galileo. In about two seconds, Hoto and Hardin were going to see that Karkon’s Wing had all systems back online and was fully functional, and the second they did, they were going to go to warp, whether or not the cloaking device was working, which had to be the only reason they hadn’t done so yet.

  And he couldn’t let that happen.

  The whole time Spock had been working, Pike had been working as well. Not just figuring out where the weapons console was but getting a rough idea of how to work it. He sat down to that console now, next to the Orion weapons officer, and aligned the targeting matrix.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Keeping a promise.” I hope, he added silently, bringing first the starboard and then the port weapons batteries to bear.

  He fired. A split-second later, Galileo exploded in a burst of sudden blue-white light.

  Pike had never seen a Federation craft blow up that way before, with those colors. His guess was that it had something to do with the cloaking device.

  He supposed he’d never really know for certain.

  Pike sighed and rested his arms on the console. He closed his eyes for a second.

  “Captain Pike,” Spock said.

  Pike looked up to see that the main viewscreen was no longer filled with the image of a starfield but now displayed the face of a single Orion male. An immense Orion male. Head shaved bald, wearing pirate leathers.

  “Karkon’s Wing. This is Videl, prime warlord of the Clan Singhino. We note your ship is severely damaged. We will provide assistance.”

  Commander Gorlea—who had at some point, Pike saw, assumed the command chair—straightened in his seat and spoke. “The damage is not as severe as it might seem. You make a generous offer, Videl, but—”

  “You err, Codruta. We made no offer, merely a statement of fact. We will provide assistance.” The Orion smiled. “Stand down your weapons, and prepare to be boarded.”

  THIRTY

  Boyce had feared disaster. Things turned out to be nowhere near as bad as all that. In fact, the arrival of the Singhino seemed to be, at least initially, a good thing.

  They provided assistance, as promised: medical supplies, which came via shuttle through a hull breach near enough to the command center that Boyce was able to watch them unload. The Singhino warlord—Videl, the same one Boyce had spoken to earlier, briefly, at Liyan’s insistence—had been huddled in conference with Captain Pike for some time now. Some of the Codruta had been led off the bridge; others remained. Among the latter were Gorlea—the older male—and Deleen, who, although she had finally gotten up off the floor, still hadn’t moved very far from the tallith’s body.

  From what Boyce had overheard, Videl seemed prepared to offer the three of them—the captain, Spock, and himself—safe passage back to Enterprise. In return for which, Pike would treat with the Singhino not just as heads of the Trade Confederacy but as innocents with regard to the attack on Starbase 18. All well and good.

  Where they were stuck, though, was on the matter of the image projector, the Second Empire technology that had made that attack possible, that pushed the Federation and the Klingon Empire to the brink of war. Videl, who seemed singularly uninterested in the device’s capabilities, was nonetheless refusing to allow Captain Pike to take the image projector with him. The captain was being just as firm about having something in hand to show Starfleet Command. The conversation was spirited. Not unfriendly.

  At least, until the second that the port turbolift opened, and Gurgis stepped out.

  Boyce was among the first to see him; the Orion had not bothered to change or even, the doctor suspected, clean himself after his imprisonment. His face was still bruised, his clothes torn. He had no shoes. He looked altogether terrifying.

  “You are here. You are alive.” Videl broke off the conversation he’d been having with Captain Pike and stepped toward Gurgis.

  “No thanks to you, Warlord.” Gurgis’s eyes traveled past Videl. “Ah, Captain Pike. I remember you.”

  “I remember you as well, Gurgis.”

  “Yes. I am head of Clan Singhino—unless my position has been usurped.”

  Videl shook his head. “No. You remain clan leader.”

  “Yet I see you negotiating with the human, Warlord. Who granted you authority to do that?”

  “In your absence, someone had to.”

  The two stared at each other.

  Videl’s manner, his words … they were not exactly what the doctor would have called deferential. Judging from the look on Gurgis’s face as well, Boyce suspected the two were not fond of e
ach other.

  And then, all at once, that expression changed. Gurgis looked past Videl and smiled. He walked by the others, toward Deleen and the tallith’s body.

  “Codruta.”

  “Gurgis.”

  “Now it is you who live and die at my whim, yes?”

  “I’m not afraid,” she said, which was a lie.

  Even from where he stood, Boyce could see her trembling.

  Gurgis could obviously see it, too. His smile grew broader.

  Captain Pike stepped forward. “If you’re in charge of those ships out there, you and I have a lot to talk about. Starfleet and the Orions have common interests in this sector.”

  Gurgis nodded. “In a moment.” He reached out a hand, and touched Deleen’s chin.

  “As I promised, my people have come for me. Your mother, though—” He shrugged. “It seems I won’t have a chance to honor the remainder of the vow I made to you. Do you remember that vow, girl?”

  Deleen pulled backward, trying to shrug off his grip. “Leave me alone,” she said.

  “Do you remember?” Gurgis asked.

  Boyce did. “That’s enough,” he said, stepping forward.

  Gurgis’s head whipped around. “The Codruta have fallen, human. I am in charge here.” He nodded toward two Singhino soldiers, who stepped forward, weapons drawn.

  The command center was suddenly completely silent.

  Captain Pike put a hand on his arm; Boyce realized he was shaking, too. “Easy, Doctor.”

  Gurgis turned back to Deleen. “You will serve a useful political purpose. The new leader of the Codruta, willfully subordinating herself to the Singhino.”

  “An alliance with the Federation would be even more politically useful, wouldn’t it?” Pike asked.

  “I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive.”

  Boyce didn’t like the insinuating tone in the Orion’s voice; he liked even less what that tone implied. But he didn’t see that there was anything he could do about it.

  Biology as destiny. Maybe Deleen had been right after all.

  Gurgis took her by the arm and dragged her to her feet.