Star Trek®: Excelsior: Forged in Fire

by Michael A. Martin

  “That’s a hard question to answer,” Klass said with a small shrug. “After all, there are plenty of microorganisms capable of acquiring genes from one another through direct cytoplasmic transfer. That phenomenon alone might account for portions of the virus’s genome.”

  “But not all of it.”

  Klass nodded. “Right. The odds against this organism arising naturally are astronomical. It has far too many points of similarity to the pathogen that devastated the planet Qu’Vat in the twenty-second century to be unrelated.”

  “Qu’Vat,” Sulu said. “That’s a Klingon colony, isn’t it?”

  Klass nodded again. “Just two light-years from the border of Federation space. A Denobulan physician named Phlox wrote several papers detailing the plague that broke out there one hundred and thirty-five years ago, and its aftereffects. He drew heavily on the work of a Klingon geneticist named Antaak, who used tailored retroviruses to treat the plague.”

  “Did these papers explain how both human and Klingon genes might have gotten grafted onto our virus?” Sulu asked.

  “Phlox wrote extensively about Antaak’s recombinant DNA techniques,” Klass said, pinching the bridge of her nose as she considered the possibilities. “Of course, the genes could have jumped from one viral strain to another without any advanced lab work, especially in the original ‘wild’ airborne version of the pathogen. The virus we’re dealing with here could have picked up DNA sequences from members of one species before being transmitted to members of another species and picking up theirs, whether or not the original virus itself had been tinkered with in other respects.”

  Because of his knowledge of the genetics of exotic plant life—he’d been an amateur exobotanist longer than he’d served in Starfleet, thanks in no small part to his mother’s work as an agronomist—Sulu was willing to believe that random mutations and gene transfers might explain the lethality of this new virus. But the horrible death of the woman in the bar—not to mention decades of suspicions about the motives of the Klingons—wouldn’t allow him to invoke pure coincidence just yet.

  “Is it possible,” he said, “that the Klingons intended this virus to be a weapon?”

  She spread her hands. “I can’t say for sure one way or the other. It’s tough to imagine anybody perverting bioscience in such a way as to deliberately create a bioweapon that kills the way this thing can. But I suppose we can’t put that past them, especially given what happened on Qu’Vat.”

  Sulu felt a surge of embarrassment that he wasn’t better versed in the past couple of centuries of Klingon frontier history. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the Klingon scientist I mentioned—Antaak—worked on variants of his initial therapeutic Levodian flu retrovirus for years after the plague. It was as though he wasn’t satisfied with the cure, despite the millions of lives he was credited with saving. So he continued his recombinant DNA research. And either because of or in spite of this work—nobody really seems to know which—several million Klingons living on Qu’Vat died from another similar plague outbreak sometime in the early 2170s. Antaak himself was one of the casualties.”

  Sulu winced. Despite his ambivalence toward the Klingon Empire and its aggressive, expansionist ways, he’d had personal dealings with a Klingon officer or two during his time in Starfleet. He had even worked alongside one on an important clandestine mission. He had found these men, warriors all, to be honorable; their culture seemed to demand it. Such people deserved better than to die from the ravages of some microorganism.

  “It sounds almost as though everyone was wiped out,” Sulu said. “Were there any survivors?”

  “Of course,” Klass said, though a haunted look crossed her lined face. “There always are. Several million of them, in fact. But these people suffered permanent retroviral alterations to their DNA. These changes rendered most of them sterile. There was widespread albinism, anemia, as well as just about any other chronic ailment you can imagine.”

  Sulu’s throat suddenly went dry. He knew enough about Klingon mores to guess what must have happened next. “The Klingons must have quarantined the planet afterward. And then mass-euthanized all the sick people the virus hadn’t managed to kill.”

  Klass nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. “With typical Klingon ruthlessness, no doubt, since they’ve never made it a secret that they consider only the ‘strong’ to be worthy of survival. For all we know, the virus I’ve got under the microscope right now could have been part of a secret Klingon bioweapons program that the Empire decided to test on its own ‘undesirables’ on Qu’Vat.”

  Undesirables, Sulu thought with an inward shudder. Lepers. Outcasts.

  And outcasts frequently became outlaws.

  Sulu considered the nameless Klingon albino who had so terrified the woman in the spaceport bar—and who had apparently engineered her death with a highly specific biological weapon. Then he recalled the chalk-skinned terror of his childhood, the phantasm that had afflicted his dreams yet again last night.

  Despite the renowned Klingon tradition of weeding out “weaklings”—a phenomenon that could only make albinism an all but nonexistent rarity in the Klingon Empire—Sulu realized that the odds were decidedly against the dead woman’s albino being the same man he had witnessed raiding his mother’s lab on Ganjitsu more than four decades ago.

  But last night’s dreams still argued persuasively that his subconscious believed otherwise.

  SEVEN

  2269 (the Year of Kahless 895,

  early in the month of Xan’lahr)

  I.K.S. ’OghwI’

  Captain Koloth stalked onto the bridge, his usually smooth brow furrowed in barely contained fury.

  The captain of an Earther starship had once again filled his engine room from bulkhead to beam with a writhing mass of furry, screeching yIH—the pestilent creatures that the Earthers called “tribbles.” It was the same blight that had infested his previous command, the battlecruiser I.K.S. Gr’oth, which Koloth had been forced to scuttle hurriedly in order to prevent the hated furballs from spreading to the Klingon agricultural colonies in the Donatu sector and beyond.

  The ignominy lay not merely in the fact of the presence of the yIH themselves, although that was certainly bad enough. No, Koloth’s current humiliation derived mostly from the fact that today marked the second occasion in as many years when he had fallen victim to this very tactic.

  Worse yet, it was the second time it had been employed against him—

  —by James.

  Tiberius.

  Kirk.

  Koloth stomped toward the command chair, which sat atop a dais in the center of the crowded control room. Commander Korax, the ’OghwI’’s second-in-command, hastened to relinquish the seat and get out of Koloth’s way.

  “Ship’s status!” Koloth barked as he sat, baring his teeth in a rictus that only superficially resembled a smile. He could see from the quailing reactions of the two young bekks who manned the stations just beyond the command chair that his aspect couldn’t have been more frightening if he possessed the proud HemQuch forehead crest of his noble warrior ancestors.

  “Our standard offensive and defensive systems remain operational,” Korax said. “But the stasis cannon we’ve been testing is still depleted, and will take several kilaans to regenerate its power cells.”

  “The stasis cannon is clearly a failure,” said Koloth. “It cripples us as much as it does the enemy. How is the cleanup progressing?”

  “Second officer Gherud and Chief Engineer Kurr have just finished spacing the last of those miserable yIH,” Korax added.

  “They will no doubt have missed some of them,” Koloth said, drawing some degree of comfort from the fact that Lieutenant Gherud was finally making himself truly useful. Such was not always the case with Gherud; it was a never-ending source of frustration for Koloth that the ambitious second officer’s political connections within both the Klingon Defense Force Command and the High Council had made Gherud’s position as the ’
OghwI’’s political officer an all but unassailable sinecure.

  “Some of the yIH have probably managed to enter shielded sections of the ship by now,” Korax said. “We can’t scan those areas properly, or establish positive transporter locks.”

  Koloth suppressed a growl. “Indeed. The vermin started getting into everything—after you scattered them by firing your disruptor into their midst.”

  Chastened yet sullen, Korax thrust out his chin, tempting Koloth to tear it loose and beat him senseless with it. “The glo’meH can surely devour the few that remain,” said the first officer.

  The glo’meH, or “glommer,” as the Earthers called it, was an artificial life-form, a prototype created by the Klingon Empire’s finest geneticists for the sole purpose of eradicating yIH, which even now threatened to overrun at least one of the Empire’s key agricultural worlds. Apparently it wasn’t enough that the cursed fuzzballs that the glo’meH was designed to destroy had, not long ago, blown apart a carefully laid Klingon Intelligence scheme to seize the disputed Donatu-sector world of SermanyuQ from the ever-grasping hands of the Earthers and their yuQjIjQa’, otherwise known as the United Federation of Planets.

  Then the shrieking creatures just had to turn out to be more than even the hungry glo’meH could stomach.

  Koloth shook his head. “At this moment, Korax, our prototype predator is cowering under the engine room deck plating like a frightened Regulan bloodworm. Let us hope its descendants will prove somewhat more useful.” Eager to change the subject, Koloth added, “What is our current heading?”

  “Archanis, Captain,” Korax said. “As you ordered. Do you wish to reverse course, sir? We can still intercept the Enterprise well before it reaches SermanyuQ if we come about now.”

  Koloth was seriously considering doing just that. The thought of allowing Kirk’s quintotriticale-laden convoy to make it intact all the way to SermanyuQ—the world the Earthers insisted on calling “Sherman’s Planet”—was very nearly too much to bear.

  “May Fek’lhr boil Kirk’s eyes and feast on them,” Koloth said.

  “Your ‘dear old friend’ deserves no less, Captain,” Korax said, nodding and displaying a death’s-head grin of his own. “And I know I would relish nothing more than teaching that swaggering, tin-plated martinet a lesson.” A cold realization came to Koloth: a decision to even the score would still be a decision to pursue, attack, and destroy the Enterprise.

  And very likely renew the state of all-out war that would have utterly engulfed both the Empire and the Federation had the energy-beings of ’orghenya’ not deigned to interfere.

  With so many Klingon worlds suffering from simple lack of food and other resources of late, is this the wisest course to pursue right now? Koloth thought, unsure of how even the unforgettable Kahless himself would rule on the matter.

  “Request permission to pursue and attack,” Korax said, interrupting Koloth’s weighty musings. The first officer’s fierce expression showed a desire for revenge that seemed to occlude all else.

  Koloth decided then and there that Korax’s desires—and in no small part, his own—were far too personal to be allowed to jeopardize what remained of the Empire’s current diminished prospects.

  Koloth felt a surprising calm descend upon the fires of his warrior’s soul. It was as though he was seeing the meaning of an image change just by being projected onto a much larger surface. The image in his mind encompassed the entire Empire, all the centuries that it had endured since the outrages of the Hurq invaders all the way to whatever grand destiny awaited it in the ever-shifting mists of the future.

  Let the High Council decide when and how to plunge the Empire into total war, Koloth thought.

  “Fek’lhr will take Kirk when he is good and ready,” he said at length. He leaned forward in his chair and began addressing the young helmsman, a neutral yet anticipatory expression displayed on his goateed QuchHa’ face.

  A high-pitched squeal from somewhere overhead interrupted Koloth just as he opened his mouth to speak.

  “Up there!” Korax said, pointing toward one of the ventilator grills mounted in the control room’s crowded and dimly illuminated ceiling.

  A stray yIH, Koloth thought, shaking his head. How long will it take to rid the ’OghwI’ of the last of these vermin once and for all? Unpleasant visions of the hastily abandoned Gr’oth being blown to atoms just qelI’qams from his retreating escape pod sprang unbidden into his mind.

  “Get the cursed thing down from there and dispose of it,” Koloth snapped.

  “With pleasure,” Korax said. He wasted no time climbing toward the ceiling grille, pushing a bekk aside in order to use the crewman’s communications console to make his precarious ascent. Korax tore the grille screen open with a resounding clang, inserted one long arm into the air conduit behind it, and extracted a single chittering, angry yIH. The first officer held onto the writhing, twisting creature as best he could.

  And fell awkwardly to the deck with a bone-crunching thud.

  Korax rose, enraged and in obvious pain, grasped the screaming furball in both hands, and tore it asunder. A messy deluge of hair and ruby-hued alien ichor spattered the first officer’s uniform tunic, raining messily to the deck while the bekks looked on.

  Koloth closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.

  “Thank you, Korax. Now I’d appreciate it if you’d get a mop….”

  EIGHT

  Stardate 8993.0 (Late 2289)

  U.S.S. Excelsior

  Klass sat at the conference table with her hands folded, watching the captain intently. Not for the first time, she wondered what he’d do with his hands if he didn’t have that omnipresent swagger stick to play with.

  “Biochemical warfare,” Styles said. “Directed at the Federation and the Klingon peace talks by a mysterious, possibly albino, possibly Klingon, possibly male sentient, who may or may not have sent a woman to her death for delivering a warning to you.” Styles leaned back in his chair, a dubious expression on his face. “Have I missed anything?”

  Before either Klass or Sulu could respond, Styles held up a finger. Looking directly at Sulu, he said, “Oh, and who may or may not be the same albino Klingon who raided your parents’ settlement forty years ago, when you were a child. There, I believe that about covers it.”

  “Captain, let me show you why I believe that there may be more credibility in Commander Sulu’s suggestions than may seem obvious.” Seated next to Sulu, Klass spoke up, even as she punched data into her tricorder. She had been certain to place a slight emphasis on the word “commander” just to remind her captain that his passive-aggressive stance toward Sulu should be tempered by rank, even if not by propriety. She gave Sulu a quick sidelong glance and was pleased to see that he was masking his emotions, which were, no doubt, as high as Yellow Alert level inside: no one liked being talked down to as though he were a recalcitrant schoolchild.

  The signal from her tricorder fed onto the triscreen in the center of the conference room table, allowing not only Styles but also Lieutenant Commander Cutler and Lieutenant Schulman to view the images. The monitors displayed the same magnified greenish, globular microorganism that Klass had shown Sulu in sickbay earlier this morning.

  “This is the viral bioagent that killed the alien woman,” Klass said. “The pathogen incorporates genetic code cribbed from the Levodian flu, the Klingon retroviruses that devastated the Klingon colony on Qu’Vat more than a century ago, as well as at least seven other genetically tailored viral elements that include assorted known human, Klingon, Orion, and Andorian viruses.”

  “So, you’re absolutely certain that this thing is a bioweapon?” Cutler asked.

  “If you’ll excuse the expression, I’d stake my life on it.” Klass gave Cutler a wry smile, peering in much the same way that Klass’s own mother had done whenever she’d been intent on communicating something important. “This particular pathogen is heavily bioengineered. And its only purpose would be to kill.”

 
Styles frowned. “Before I lifted the quarantine, you said this virus was not a danger to the crew.”

  “It isn’t,” Klass said cleanly. “It’s not airborne, nor transferable by skin-to-skin contact. It’s theoretically possible for an infected person to pass the pathogen to others through blood or other body fluids, but according to my preliminary studies it would take months of repeated exposure.”

  “What about ingestion?” Cutler asked.

  Klass spread her hands and gave a slight shrug. “This particular virus…maybe, maybe not. As a bioweapon, it would be most effective if delivered to the bloodstream quickly and in high concentrations, by hypospray or some other injection mechanism.”

  She turned toward Sulu. “We’re all concentrating too strongly on this particular virus, however. Put simply, whoever designed this was a biotech genius. The grafting of multiple types of alien DNA I found within this virus is truly astonishing in its complexity. If this were the work of a Federation scientist, the designer would have to be somebody at the very top of the microbiology food chain, so to speak.”

  Klass gestured toward Sulu, continuing. “The reason Commander Sulu is taking this potential threat so seriously—and the reason we all should do likewise, in my opinion—is that whoever designed this virus…if he can engineer this, he can probably also engineer something a whole lot worse.”

  “So your research shows that we clearly have discovered a bioterrorist weapon,” said Styles. “But what we don’t have, beyond hearsay from a dying woman, and Commander Sulu’s hypothesis, is an actual terrorist…nor any truly credible threat to the Korvat peace talks.”

  “If I may, Captain,” Lieutenant Schulman spoke up, pulling up data on the padd that lay on the table before her.

  “Go ahead,” Styles said, settling back in his chair again.

  “Searching through both Starfleet and civilian Federation databases, I’ve found thirty-four separate accounts in the last fifty-plus years of border raids or attacks at which one of the raiders was identified as a pale or albino Klingon. The majority of them also identify various Orions among the raiding party—curiously, all male—and a scattered few other species, including Klingons.”