“We know Starfleet Intelligence has its spies and agents everywhere,” Tharlas insisted. “Just recently, a human espionage agent was captured on Deneb V in possession of stolen specifications for a Vulcan fuel synthesizer.”
“What happened?” asked the Enterprise captain, from the corner of the room where he had been unobtrusively watching the investigative team of technicians pore over his transporter equipment. He was clearly agitated, both by the presence of outsiders and by the situation as a whole, but he managed to keep a largely stoic mien that T’Pring thought impressive, for a human.
Tharlas’s left antenna twitched as he looked over to the human. “Justice was served,” he said simply.
“Justice is served only if the guilty are punished and the innocent spared.” T’Pring closed the log file and plucked the data card from its slot. “And the evidence we have gathered thus far does support Commander Kirk’s version of events.”
“Evidence which he was most able of controlling,” the Andorian said in a dismissive tone. “Any evidence we find at the beam-down site will be far more telling, I think.”
“I concur,” T’Pring said. Tharlas issued orders to his technicians, leaving one to finish the examination of the Enterprise transporter, while the rest packed their equipment and followed the chief to the shuttlebay. With Babel at heightened alert status, even security personnel were prohibited from using transporters, and so they all climbed back aboard the slightly cramped Zabathu-class shuttle. It wasn’t until the entire team had boarded that T’Pring noticed Captain Pike had accompanied the group to the bay.
“I’m coming with you,” the human declared once his presence was acknowledged.
Tharlas scowled. “I don’t think so, Captain. We allowed you to be present in the transporter room as a courtesy. However—”
“A courtesy?” Pike said, in an unexpected burst of emotion. “To allow me to go where I please on my own ship?” Then, as suddenly as his ire had flared, it seemed just as quickly to burn away. “Colonel…Subcommander…Lady T’Pol is my responsibility, as are the actions of my first officer. I respect that this is your jurisdiction, and I promise to keep staying out of your way, but I need to be a part of this. Besides,” he added, letting some hint of emotion pull at one corner of his mouth, “I don’t think any of us want to create yet another interplanetary incident, when the summit hasn’t even officially started yet.”
Before Tharlas could refuse, T’Pring turned to him and added, “I agree. Additional diplomatic incidents are undesirable at this point.”
Tharlas’s antennae twitched in annoyance, but he realized arguing further would be pointless. They boarded and took their seats as the small craft began to power up. “I must admit, Captain,” T’Pring said as the shuttlebay outside depressurized, “I am surprised by the degree of emotion you’ve shown in this matter.”
Pike looked at her askance, then shrugged. “Well, I am only human.”
T’Pring took a moment to consider that seemingly incongruous answer. “Pardon me, Captain, I believe my word choice was improper. I believe it more accurate to say I’ve been surprised by the degree of passion you’ve shown in this matter.”
“How so?” Pike asked, turning his stoic face directly toward her.
“You are a longtime veteran of Starfleet service,” she answered, “and have served as a starship commander for over ten Earth years. Only days ago, you attempted to violate Coalition territory and were briefly engaged in a standoff with a Coalition ship. I would not have expected such a person to express such a direct, personal concern for T’Pol, given what she represents.”
Pike’s eyes narrowed slightly in a show of confusion. “And what does she represent?”
“To you, the end of history. A significant alteration, if not the termination, of the life you are so familiar with.”
The tiny beginnings of a smile cracked Pike’s stoic mien. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
T’Pring raised a single eyebrow in reaction to that unexpected response. “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Pike added, “I’m proud to be a Starfleet officer, and I’m proud to have served my world and my people all these years. But if you want to know what T’Pol represents for me…?”
“I do,” T’Pring confirmed.
“T’Pol to me represents the old Earth Starfleet, an organization that aspired to more than patrolling the borders and making sure our dilithium supplies were secure—when we were concerned with advancing the human race, not just maintaining the status quo.”
“Despite the fact that she is not of the human race?” T’Pring asked.
Pike shrugged. “Not logical, is it?”
“I would not say that,” T’Pring answered. “One does wonder how humanity might have advanced in the past century had your people…our peoples…continued to build upon the relationships T’Pol forged.”
Pike considered that for a moment silently, then asked T’Pring, “So, what about you? What does this woman—whose relationship with humans was so important that she decided to leave your world and live on Earth—represent to Vulcan?”
T’Pring considered Pike, and wondered what his reaction would be if she were to offer the complete answer. “There is no consensus” is what she finally said instead.
After a short descent through the planetoid’s negligible atmosphere, the shuttle landed, and the investigative team made its way through the complex to its subterranean levels. They reached a door that was labeled “Maintenance Personnel Only” in Vulcan and four other languages, and as soon as the team entered, Sublieutenant Loak, a young Tellarite technician, began sneezing loudly and violently. “There’s definitely been some—graa-chhooo!—body in here recently. The dust is flying like—graaa-cchhooo!”
As Loak excused himself, the other team members pulled out their hand sensors and multicorders, scanning for any indication of who had been there, and where they might have gone. “I’m picking up traces of residual transporter energy,” Tharlas reported. “The signature matches that of the Enterprise’s system,” he added, glaring accusingly at Pike.
“Curious,” T’Pring said as she examined her own multicorder.
“What is?” Tharlas asked.
“We confirmed three transports on Enterprise: two disembarking, one boarding. The residual energy levels in this area would seem to indicate more transporter activity in and out than accounted for.”
“Somebody else beamed in and out, then,” Pike said.
T’Pring reconfirmed her readings before continuing, “The curious part is, as Tharlas stated, all the energy signals indicate the use of a Terran-design transporter system.”
Pike’s eyes widened slightly. “Which means another ship using a Terran transporter!”
T’Pring looked at Pike directly. “That is the logical conclusion.”
“Colonel, Subcommander, come look at this.”
Tharlas and T’Pring turned in the direction of Lieutenant Hyaud. “What is it?” the colonel asked as they approached the Bolian woman, with Pike close behind.
Hyaud answered by handing the Andorian her multicorder. His antennae snapped nearly straight up in surprise, then turned to T’Pring. “What do you make of this, Subcommander?” he asked, fixing her with a look that he had until now reserved exclusively for use on the humans.
She took the proffered device, awkwardly trying to operate both it and her own scanner. After a bit of juggling, she let her multicorder hang loose on its strap as she examined the top portion of the other’s small screen. She noted what appeared to be highly magnified and rather unremarkable images of hair strands. It took a moment for T’Pring to understand the significance of this find, until her eyes went to the chemical analysis of the hairs.
“What is it?” Pike asked, peering over her shoulder.
“What appear to be strands of Vulcan head hair,” T’Pring said carefully, “broken free of their follicles two to eight hours ago.”
“T’Pol’s?” Pike asked.
> T’Pring shook her head. “Their pigmentation and relative strength indicate a younger individual, in the range of eighty to one hundred years.”
Tharlas nodded as T’Pring made his case for him. “I am going to need to reinterview Councillor Sarek.”
“I understand,” T’Pring said, although she knew these hairs were not Sarek’s. Nor were they, despite initial appearance, any Vulcan’s, but she could not share that information with the Andorian. She handed the Andorian’s multicorder back and took hers in hand again. She quickly broke the link she had established between the two devices, and confirmed that she had copied and transmitted all of Tharlas’s data to the only people to whom she could entrust it, and all it entailed. Now, she could only hope they could use it to some advantage.
Captain Syvak emerged from his small private office and found himself the object of the rapt attention of every crew member present on the Kuvak bridge. On any of his seven previous commands this would not have been remarkable. But the Kuvak, as a diplomatic vessel in service to the Vulcan government, was exempt from Coalition Space Command’s diversity requirements, and was crewed exclusively by natives of that single planet.
This meant Syvak had to be particularly mindful of his reaction to T’Pring’s communiqué, and make certain he was in control of even the most subtle expression of his thoughts and worries as he faced his people.
They did not seem to have the same concerns, though—the curiosity was plain on each one of their faces as they awaited the latest news on the security breach on the planetoid below. “Mind your stations,” the captain ordered, causing eyes to quickly shift away. Undisciplined children, Syvak thought to himself as he crossed to the science station and handed the sublieutenant currently on duty a blood-green data card. “Stonn, I require an analysis of these multicorder readings.”
The younger man nodded as he took the card, and pulled the data up on his screen. “Portions of this message have been redacted,” he declared, turning back to face the captain.
“They were irrelevant,” Syvak said firmly, inadvertently allowing a tremor of annoyance to underlie his words. Stonn, no doubt, would have understood any redactions would have been made by Syvak himself, and thus, there was no logical reason for him to blurt out his observation aloud to the rest of the crew. “The data provided is sufficient for your purposes,” the captain told him sharply. Stonn hesitated a fraction of a second before turning away and back to his task.
It was only his experience in commanding officers of a variety of differing species that enabled Syvak to tolerate this young man. Stonn was a mostly competent but mediocre scientist, and unmotivated as an officer, seemingly content to remain a sublieutenant until his term of service expired. He had been assigned to the Kuvak at the request of Councillor Sarek, though it was no secret that this had in fact come at the behest of the councillor’s aide. Given her position, T’Pring could have her choice of consorts, and Syvak saw no logic in preferring Stonn over any other potential mate; and yet, for whatever reasons, she did.
Several minutes later, Stonn had compiled and translated T’Pring’s multicorder data into a three-dimensional representation of the planetoid, with the Earth ship in orbit above it, and six lines, representing transporter beams, stretched upward from a single point on the planetoid. Three of those lines ran directly to the Enterprise.
Three others did not. Rather, they extended past the Earth ship’s starboard warp nacelle, through empty space, with no obvious end point.
“Curious,” Stonn noted. “Were these transports initiated at the ground site?”
“Negative,” Syvak answered as he studied the image. “All were initiated by orbital transport systems.” The captain pondered the three anomalous beams a moment longer before saying, “Incorporate data from our sensor logs over the last six hours.”
Stonn nodded and keyed in a new series of commands, incorporating the new data into his display. Now, the science station showed some sort of faint, ill-defined blur approximately nine hundred meters below the Enterprise’s position. All three of the mystery beams intersected this anomaly directly.
Syvak leaned in closer, but could not make anything more of the image than a hazy distortion. “Analysis, Sublieutenant?”
“Inconclusive,” the younger man said. “It would appear to be a minor ionic disturbance in the magnetosphere. Perhaps a reflection of the Earth ship’s warp engine emissions.”
“Reflections, however, cannot initiate transporter beams,” Syvak pointed out. “Can you refine the image?”
Stonn pressed a new series of buttons, and then shook his head. “My efforts are limited by the resolution of our aft sensor array.”
Syvak nodded. The bulk of the Sitar-class starship’s sensors, logically, were located on the forward section of the ship, and primarily directed ahead, with a smaller array mounted at the aft. The primary sensors could be redirected, but would be of limited effectiveness when targeted through or past the ship’s massive warp coil ring.
“Perhaps we should alert the Earth ship,” Stonn added. “They may see this only as a reflection as well, and may not be aware of the potential danger it could pose.”
Syvak considered that, and was forced to reject it. Because if this reflection was what he suspected it to be, it would be disastrous for the Earthers to learn this two-thousand-year-old secret in this way. Instead, he turned toward the helm operator. “Lieutenant Sepek, slow our orbital velocity gradually to one-third of current level, and discreetly bring our main sensor array in line with that anomaly.” Syvak lowered himself into the seat at the center of the bridge and fixed his concentration on the Enterprise, drawing nearer.
“I can’t believe Jim would really do something like this.”
Stiles lifted his head and looked up at Lee Kelso, who stood beside him at the end of the navigator’s console. “Do what? None of us know what he did. Technically, he hasn’t done anything. Innocent until proven guilty, right?”
“Well, we know he took T’Pol off the ship in the middle of the night,” Kelso said. “We know now nobody knows where she is…” Kelso shook his head, not wanting to even consider the possible conclusions. Now his friend had been relieved of duty, and the captain was helping in the search for T’Pol on the surface, leaving him in command of the Enterprise, in the midst of what was starting to look like a mission gone completely to hell.
“Geez, Lee,” Stiles said, turning back to his console, “I thought Jim was your friend.”
“What?” Kelso replied, baffled by the accusation. “Of course he is.”
“Then why does it sound like you’re siding with the Vulcans?” Stiles challenged him. “Jim said he brought the old bag back to her people. They say he didn’t, but when have you ever heard of a Vulcan who didn’t lie?” He shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned, what he did should’ve been done a hundred years ago.”
Kelso could think of nothing to say in response to that. He’d always known Stiles had strong opinions about aliens. His family had been ruined years before, when their cargo business went bankrupt in Earth’s first big trade war with the Interstellar Coalition, and the grudge had been carried down father to son, generation to generation. But he rarely saw his friend in such a malicious mood as this. Kelso was no alien lover himself, but still, he found it hard to countenance the abduction and mistreatment of an old woman, no matter what her species.
Even if he had thought of a rejoinder, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to express it. “Lieutenant, there’s something happening with the Vulcans’ ship, the Kuvak,” said Ed Leslie at the helm. “Their maneuvering thrusters have increased output by two hundred percent in the past two minutes.”
Kelso’s brow furrowed. Minimal thruster usage was needed to maintain position in orbit; the sudden jump could only mean they didn’t intend to maintain it any longer. Kelso moved back toward the command chair and ordered, “Let’s see them. On-screen.”
The image of the planetoid below them disappeared and
was replaced by a view of the Sitar-class Interstellar Coalition vessel. With only the stars as reference points, it appeared to be holding perfectly still, but Kelso knew enough not to trust that perception. “Range?”
“Eleven point eight kilometers, and closing,” Leslie answered.
“They’re maneuvering toward us?” Kelso asked, seated just on the edge of the captain’s chair.
“No,” Leslie replied, “they’re actually slowing their orbit—we’re moving up closer behind them. But they’re also assuming a higher orbit, making sure they’re keeping at a comfortable distance.”
“No such thing,” Stiles muttered, barely audible to the rest of the bridge.
“Sir?”
Kelso turned to the new science officer. “Yes, Mister Masada?”
“Sir, you should know the Sitar-class has Type III phaser emitters on its ventral hull, set just forward of their warp coil ring. Once they’re at a z-axis bearing of 0-9-1—”
“—they’ll have a clear shot,” Stiles said, finishing the thought.
“They’re not going to fire on us at a peace conference!” Kelso said, though he wondered exactly how firmly he believed that.
“If they wanted us to hand Jim over to them, they would,” Stiles said. “Threaten to, at least.”
“You’re being paranoid,” Kelso said, even as his heart started racing a little faster.
“Sir, z-axis bearing is 0-8-0 now,” Masada reported.
Stiles turned around in his seat to look directly at Kelso, and paranoid or not, his eyes showed genuine worry. “Lee…”
Kelso had often wondered, since first being assigned to the bridge crew, how he might deal with a crisis situation while in command of the ship. He wasn’t pleased to realize that seconds were ticking by and he had yet to issue any kind of order. “Yellow Alert, raise shields,” he finally said, after what seemed to him like an eternity. He considered raising the captain and informing him of the situation, but the situation was that the Kuvak was slightly shifting its position in orbit, without making any overtly hostile moves. Already, he was wondering if Yellow Alert wasn’t an overreaction, and what a panicky fool he’d look like if all this turned out to be was—
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