Pike knew this part of Boyce’s record, of course. And he knew why the older man was bringing up Donatu V now. But he simply sipped at his drink, not daring to interrupt. “The Donatu system was the key to the Empire’s war plan. If they had taken it, then half the quadrant would be speaking Klingonese today—including the Coalition. So when the battle came, we had both Starfleet and Space Command combining forces, and we had human ground troops fighting alongside Andorians and Tellarites and Saurians, all willing to put our stupid old grievances and prejudices aside to beat back the Klingon bastards.”
Boyce wore a proud smile as he recalled one of the most historic victories of Earth’s warp flight era. But it quickly turned to a scowl as he continued, “But as soon as the war was over, everything went right back to the way it was, to the same resentment and suspicion we humans had clung to since the Vulcans first showed up and told Cochrane they didn’t like his taste in music.”
Pike waited as Boyce took a long slug of his drink before saying, “Okay, yes, it would be nice if Earth and the Coalition didn’t have to be on opposite sides sniping at each other all the time. But like you said, it’s been this way, on and off, for two hundred years. Why would you want to leave now?”
Boyce fixed the captain with a hard penetrating look. “Chris, what were the odds that we were going to find any hard evidence of any Columbia survivors? The only reason for altering course the way you did, planning to skirt the border with all sensors pointing across, was to antagonize the Interstellar Coalition.”
That’s not true, Pike wanted to tell him, and if it was anyone other than Boyce, he would have stated his denial out loud. Phil, of course, would see right through such a plain lie.
He was saved from having to say anything by the sound of a boatswain’s whistle, and Number One’s voice calling, “Bridge to Captain Pike,” over the comm.
The captain reached for the monitor on the end of Boyce’s desk. “Pike here.”
“Incoming message, sir, from Admiral Komack, Starfleet Command.”
Pike automatically straightened up in his chair at the mention of his immediate superior. It had been several hours since he’d transmitted his initial report on the incident at the Robinson Nebula, just enough time for it to have reached Earth and to have been read by the admiral. Now Komack was initiating a real-time subspace call. Pike couldn’t imagine that it was to tell him how well he’d handled the matter.
He looked over to Boyce, who was already out of his chair. “It’s time for my rounds,” he said as he moved toward the door. Pike nodded his thanks, even though he didn’t want to leave off their conversation at that particular point. Pike sighed as he watched the door slide closed behind the doctor, and then turned his attention back to the monitor. “Pipe it down here, Number One.”
Seconds later, the white-haired, stern-faced visage of Admiral Wes Komack appeared on the screen. “Hello, Admiral,” the captain said.
“Captain Pike. What is your current status?”
No preliminaries, no beating around the bush. “We’re at Vega Colony Station, and our repairs are just about complete. We—”
“Good,” Komack interrupted, though he certainly didn’t seem pleased. “As soon as repairs are finished, you’re to set course for Earth. I want you here at Headquarters for debriefing at oh-nine-hundred hours, GMT, day after tomorrow.”
Pike gaped slightly. “Sir?”
Komack’s frown deepened. “Do you foresee a problem making that schedule, Captain?”
“Uh, no, sir,” Pike answered. At warp five, the Enterprise would be there with half a day to spare. But the admiralty normally didn’t like calling their ships of the line back to home port, and usually settled for dressing down their captains via subspace. But for whatever reason, Komack wanted Pike to put in a personal appearance. “Oh-nine-hundred. I’ll be there,” Pike told the admiral.
Once Komack had signed off, Pike slumped in his chair and wondered just what exactly in hell he had gotten himself into.
At 0840 hours on the appointed day, Pike took the Enterprise shuttle Haise, requested clearance from Bozeman Station Control, and launched from the shuttlebay, heading east for Starfleet Headquarters. Ten minutes later, he was across the Atlantic and descending toward Antwerp. Pike had fallen in love with the ancient Belgian city from his first day at Starfleet Academy, and as he descended, he couldn’t help but admire the sight of the sun rising behind the high spire of the Cathedral of Our Lady and the Boerentoren, illuminating the city below. But, he had to switch his attention to UESPA’s modern complex of buildings on the west bank of the Scheldt River.
By 0855 he’d landed, and at 0900 sharp he was escorted by a gray-uniformed security officer to the ninth floor and led to a set of wooden double doors. The guard pulled one of the metal door handles, shaped like the swooping arch from the UESPA seal, and admitted him into an oversized hearing room. Four dozen observers’ seats, all currently empty, filled the rear half of the room. The white, gold, and blue flag of United Earth hung on the front wall of the room, directly behind an elevated dais, from which two imposing figures sat watching him.
Admiral Komack considered the captain with the inscrutable stare of a Vulcan as he made his way to the front of the hearing room. Pike only took dim notice, though, as his attention was taken by the man seated next to Komack. “Ah. Captain Pike, I presume?” Admiral Kelvar Garth intoned in a deep voice.
Pike halted and snapped to full attention. “Yes, sir. Reporting as ordered, Admirals.”
Both men continued to stare at him from their elevated perch wordlessly. Whereas Komack wore his poker face while regarding Pike, Garth’s displeasure was undisguised as he glared at the Enterprise commander with his harsh ice-blue eyes. Kelvar Garth, famed hero of the First Battle of Axanar, was the youngest man ever to hold the position of commander in chief of the United Earth Starfleet, and did not rise to that position because of his tolerance of subordinates’ screw-ups. Once more, Pike wondered how big a can of worms he had split open that it prompted this kind of high-level interest.
A door slid open off in the corner behind the dais, and a fourth person entered the room. “Forgive my tardiness, gentlemen,” the new arrival said, and Pike’s eyes widened as he recognized the low resonant voice from the news dispatches of the last several months. The man, a civilian, wearing a bright yellow jacket with a white cravat knotted around his neck, climbed the bench, nodded to the admirals, and then looked down. “And you would be Captain Pike,” said Carter Winston, smiling at him from behind his thick, dark handlebar mustache.
Pike nodded. “Yes, Mister Prime Minister.” Carter Winston was a man about Pike’s own age, a self-made millionaire, philanthropist, and, as of five months ago, the highest elected leader of the United Earth government.
And he was personally sitting in on this debriefing. Clearly, Pike realized, the can he’d opened held not worms, but giant Caldorian eels.
“At ease, Captain,” Garth growled, at which point Pike realized just how tense his entire body was. “Take a seat, and let’s get this thing started.”
“Aye, sir.” Pike did as he was told, moving through the gallery to the single seat in the center of the room. Once situated, he took a bracing breath and laid his palm on the biosensor to his right. It did not activate.
“Captain, you’re not on trial here,” Komack said, coming dangerously close to cracking a grin as Pike tried lifting his hand and repositioning it on the unlit circular panel. “Point of fact, this meeting is going to have to be kept somewhat unofficial, for the time being.”
Pike raised one eyebrow at his immediate superior. “Unofficial?” he repeated. He looked pointedly to the head of Starfleet and the head of the government. “Lot of officials here for something unofficial.”
Prime Minister Winston laughed out loud at that. “One thing I’ve learned in recent months, Captain, is that far more happens in government in unofficial meetings than in official ones.”
“This meeting is
unofficial in that the prime minister and I are not really here,” said Garth, still looking quite angry. “As far as anyone outside this room is concerned, this is just a typical debriefing, you and your immediate superior. Anything else that is discussed here is to be treated as classified. Is that understood, Captain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right.” Garth pulled a data slate across the desk and glanced down at its display. “So, Captain, your report in a nutshell: you were attacked by two Orion ships in neutral space. The I.C.V. V’Lar came to your aid, and the pirates were driven off. You then shared the suspected location of a lost human ship inside Coalition territory with the V’Lar, and their captain offered to investigate as you returned to Earth-controlled space. Is that accurate?”
“That’s a pretty small nutshell, sir, but yes, it’s accurate.”
Garth folded his hands and leaned forward. “Something that you think needs elaboration?”
Pike hesitated, then said, “Well, it’s not as if the V’Lar offered to go looking for the Columbia out of the goodness of their hearts. They were just trying to keep us out of their territory.”
“And if the situation were reversed, Captain,” Prime Minister Winston interjected, “would you have allowed an I.C. ship into our space, on the pretext of searching for a thirty-year-old Vulcan expedition?”
Before Pike could give the obvious answer, Garth spoke up again. “The Talos system, where they traced the Columbia signal, is apparently a long-known navigational hazard, not unlike our own Delta Triangle. The V’Lar was reported missing en route there two days ago.”
Pike paused as that piece of information sank in. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, dipping his head slightly.
“Are you really, Captain?”
Pike’s head snapped up again at Komack’s question. He wasn’t sure if he was being doubted or disparaged for expressing human compassion, and Komack’s mien gave no hint either way. “Yes, I am,” he said, and realized that it was true. “I’ve no reason to wish ill on Captain Cheg or his crew. And if he did, in fact, sacrifice himself on behalf of an Earth ship’s crew, then of course I’d regret the loss of such a man.” He wished, at the moment, Phil Boyce had been there to witness this revelation, but the doctor was already packed and gone off to his daughter’s.
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Captain,” Winston said. “Very glad. Have you read John Gill’s new book on Nathan Samuels?”
Pike felt a bit of disorientation at that sudden change of topic. “No, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t.” Of course, he recognized the name of the man who had been prime minister at the time of the Xindi attack in the last century; the author’s name meant nothing to him, though.
“It’s a fascinating read,” the prime minister said. “Gill was able to go through all of the records that had been sealed in the International Archives until seventy-five years after Samuels’s death. Did you know that Samuels had been a member of Terra Prime in his teens?”
“No, I didn’t,” Pike answered, still confused, but his interest slightly piqued.
Winston nodded. “After the attack on San Francisco in 2155, and John Paxton’s arrest, his lieutenants couldn’t distance themselves from him fast enough. But at the same time, the alien governments who had lost their ambassadors started publicly quarreling about who would be the first to try Paxton. The surviving leaders of Terra Prima managed to pull off a brilliant piece of political jujitsu: they insisted Paxton be tried, on Earth, for crimes against humanity—and just humanity. They argued that the other races, by demanding extradition, were devaluing the human lives lost, and succeeded in strengthening the xenophobia of the era. What should have been the end of Terra Prime instead gave rise to a populist political movement, one Samuels had to support, or else be forced from office.”
“Mister Prime Minister,” Pike said once he was sure Winston had finished his story, “I’m afraid I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this.”
“Because in his private papers, Samuels says that he always regretted giving in to the nativists, and that he didn’t do more to try and get the Coalition of Planets talks back on track. Like Jonathan Archer, he always believed humanity would eventually reach out to the rest of the galaxy again in friendship, and exorcise the demons that have kept us focused inward all these years.”
Then he leaned forward across the dais, Samuels’s successor directly facing Archer’s. “I believe the time to reach out again, Captain, is now.”
3
Sunrise over Death Valley.
At the first hint of light, the nocturnal creatures that gave the lie to this place’s name started scurrying for the cool shade of their burrows. The temperature, which had dipped down to almost 20 degrees Celsius overnight, had already started to climb again, heading for an expected 50 degrees.
And T’Pol, who had spent the last half hour staring at the ceiling of her bedroom, lifted the thin sheet off her body and pushed herself slowly up out of bed. She slid her bare feet into an old pair of slippers and shuffled into the kitchen, where she turned on the tap and waited patiently for the ancient pump to draw enough water up from the underground spring to fill her teakettle.
The pump, like the house it was in, was over two hundred years old. The small adobe structure had been built just after World War III by a small group of religious cultists who wished to separate themselves from the rest of their violent race. This locale, one of the most forbidding on the planet, proved ideal to this purpose: no one had discovered any evidence of the group’s ritual mass suicide until two years after the fact.
Once she’d coaxed enough water out of the spigot, T’Pol placed the kettle on a small heating unit and then reached for her tin of chamomile tea. She was not quite as cut off from the world as the original inhabitants had been—that would be close to impossible on twenty-third-century Earth. But her nearest neighbors, in the town of Furnace Creek several kilometers away, were very protective of their privacy, and hers by extension. One of them, though, a Mister Timbisha, made regular sojourns into Beatty for supplies and provisions, and occasionally gifted her with small comforts, such as tea or fresh fruits. One time, he had brought a small jar of plomeek seeds, obviously smuggled to Earth by black marketers. Each time she went out to gather new leaves from her small shaded garden, she wondered how he had known what they were, and how much they must have cost him to obtain. The one time she had offered to compensate him, he refused, saying, “Some of us still remember how much Earth owes you.”
Now that T’Pol thought about it, though, Mister Timbisha had been an elderly man when she first moved to the Southern California desert. Most likely…yes, she remembered now: Timbisha had died, like so many humans she’d known over the years. He’d been dead for…decades? Could that be right? Hadn’t she seen him just…No. But if he was dead, who was it who had been bringing her her tea?
And with her thoughts returned to tea, the whistle of the kettle finally penetrated her consciousness, though she had the sense that the water had been boiling for some time.
She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her disorganized thoughts and memories to reorder themselves. The scent of chamomile as it was released and carried by the steaming water helped in that regard. Sighing, she lowered herself into a chair at the kitchen table, both gnarled hands drawing warmth from the ceramic cup.
It had been growing increasingly difficult for her to maintain her mental disciplines as the years went by. She’d struggled with her failing abilities for a long time, particularly since her time in the Expanse, and the damage she’d inflicted on herself through the abuse of trellium-D. But matters had gotten to the point recently that she’d begun to worry that she was developing Bendii Syndrome or some other infirmity. She’d lived on Earth for so long, without the benefit of a Vulcan physician; she could be suffering from any number of undiagnosed conditions…
But that was just paranoia. T’Pol still retained enough of her logical faculties to understand her current diffi
culties had begun just over a month ago, shortly after hearing the news about Elizabeth Cutler: at the age of 147 years, the last surviving human member of Jonathan Archer’s Enterprise crew had died of natural causes at her home in Tycho City, attended by five generations of her progeny.
And with her passing, T’Pol was alone, in yet one more sense.
T’Pol was startled out of her thoughts by a quiet alarm bleeping throughout the house, indicating that the property’s proximity sensors had been tripped. Bighorn sheep occasionally came down from the surrounding mountains in search of greenery to graze, but not as the sun was on its way up. Setting her cup down, T’Pol stood and reached for one of the kitchen drawers, from which she withdrew an outdated but still functional phase pistol.
She then activated a small countertop viewscreen, each of its three panels showing different views from the rooftop visual sensors. A man in denim pants and a plain blue cotton shirt was approaching from the direction of the old National Park Visitors Center, following the faint footpath that led to her front steps. T’Pol moved quickly through the house to the foyer and peered outside through a small optical lens set in the door. The man walked with both hands held away from his body, palms forward and empty. He was purposely presenting himself as harmless as he approached, but that did not mean he in fact was. Once he got within fifty meters of the house, T’Pol pushed the door open and aimed her pistol at his chest. “Do not come any closer,” she called to him.
The man did as he was told, at the same time lifting his hands a bit higher. “I mean you no harm, Lady T’Pol,” he shouted back.
“Nor do I intend to harm you,” T’Pol replied. “However, my intentions are subject to change if you do not leave this property right now.”
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