Spock regretted that he had not brought a tricorder with him, but Envoy Xuur had insisted that to do so might be seen as intrusive. As such, he was left only with his senses and a keen eye for observation to determine what he could about the Syhaari’s rapid advances in shipbuilding.
Ahead of him, Captain Kirk was doing the same. “Remarkable,” he said. “You know, it took my species a long time to build starships that could travel faster than warp three.” Kirk nodded toward his first officer. “And that was with the help of Mister Spock’s people into the bargain.”
“They didn’t help that much,” said McCoy, in a low voice.
“We have been fortunate . . .” Kaleo frowned. “Our . . . scientists made a number of breakthroughs that we were quick to exploit.”
“Is that so?” Envoy Xuur crossed to where the two captains were standing. “And you were part of that?”
Kaleo inclined her head in a dismissive gesture. “Not I, emissary. My skills are with the sailing of ships and the knowledge of stars and planets.” She gestured at the great bulk of the warp engine. “This device is almost magic to me! I trust Zond and Hoyga to make it sing for us.”
Xuur peered down, over the catwalk rail, to where members of the Friendship’s crew were hard at work. “Those power channels . . . they bear a marked resemblance to similar mechanisms on board the Enterprise.”
“You think so?” McCoy eyed the envoy. “I didn’t know you’d been down to main engineering on our ship.”
“I have not,” Xuur replied smoothly. “I do read quite widely, however.”
Spock cleared his throat. “Warp engine design typically follows a basic structure, no matter where it originates, Envoy. It is not unusual that there would be some gross structural similarities.”
“But you were an inspiration for us,” Zond broke in, unaware that he was undercutting Spock’s statement. “Your Enterprise showed us what was possible. That’s why we’ve been working so hard to get back out here.”
“Indeed?” Xuur gave Kirk a level look that the captain didn’t seem to be aware of.
Spock studied the thick brass casing around the warp core and decided to see how far the innate Syhaari desire to impress would go. “If it is not an imposition, I would be fascinated to observe the workings of the Friendship’s power core at close hand.” He glanced at Zond. “Would it be possible for me to access the interior of the shielded compartment, if only for a short period?”
“That could be—” The Syhaari first mate was never allowed to complete his sentence.
“Not permitted,” Hoyga insisted, raising her voice for the first time. “Safety of this vessel is of paramount concern. Accessing the secured inner compartment of the space drive while we are under way would be a violation of our control protocols. As a senior engineer, I cannot allow it. Please understand, it is for the safety of all of us.”
“Your . . . concern is admirable,” said Kirk. “And of course, we wouldn’t want to do anything to disrupt the operations of your vessel.” He glanced at Kaleo. “Perhaps my first officer’s curiosity could be sated in a different way? Would you be willing to allow him a look at your technical schematics?”
Kaleo gave Hoyga a glance that Spock could not read. “I believe so. See to it, engineer.”
The other Syhaari female did not seem pleased with the compromise. “As you wish, Captain. But I will need to clear it with the Learned Assembly first.”
“Thank you,” said Kirk. “Kaleo, you’ve been most welcoming to us. I’m excited to see your world and learn more about your civilization.”
The alien captain bared her teeth in something approximating a grin. “I would say the same to you, Kirk.” She patted him on the shoulder. “There are many among my kind who await your arrival with great expectation.”
“No pressure . . .” McCoy muttered, under his breath.
“We will do our best not to disappoint them,” insisted Xuur.
* * *
They returned to the Enterprise, both ships moving to warp velocity as soon as Kirk relayed the order to the bridge, but the captain had only taken a few steps from the intercom panel before he sensed the frosty change in the envoy’s mood. With a nod he dismissed Spock and turned to find Xuur glaring at him.
The diplomat’s arms were folded across her chest, and the pleasant manner she had displayed up until now was absent. “I think an explanation is in order, Kirk,” she snapped.
“How’s that?” said McCoy. “I thought that went just fine.”
“Bones.” Kirk waved him to silence. “Can you give me a moment?” He nodded toward the engineering officer at the transporter controls. “You too, Ensign.”
McCoy scowled, but he obeyed, following the other crewman out into the corridor. The door hissed shut, and then Kirk and Xuur were alone.
“You have something on your mind, Envoy?”
Xuur cocked her head, the jeweled band around her temples catching the light. “I’m starting to wonder if Ambassador Fox’s warnings about you were on the mark, Captain. He said you played fast and loose with the regulations, and after our tour of Kaleo’s ship I have to ask myself if you did that all those months ago, during your first contact with the Syhaari.”
“Let me guess, this is about what Zond said. The power channels.” Kirk matched her pose, folding his arms. He could already predict where the conversation was going, and the inference was troubling.
“I will ask you this just once,” Xuur said firmly. “Is it possible that you, or someone in your crew, provided critical design information or technology to the Syhaari on your initial encounter?” Before he could even draw breath to answer, she continued on. “I’m giving you the opportunity to be honest with me. Your logs of the first contact were brief at best. If something was omitted . . .” Xuur let the sentence hang.
“The answer is no,” Kirk shot back. “I’m not in the business of handing out advanced technology to alien beings we know little or nothing about.”
She seized on his words, and belatedly he realized he had given her the very opening she wanted. “Isn’t that exactly what you did on Capella and Neural? Granted, those were just bows and muskets, but advanced inventions all the same to the native population!”
Kirk tamped down his growing annoyance. “If you insist on using my past record as a stick to beat me with, at least have the good grace to take into account my successes as well as my failures. I told your aide, I stand by the choices I made in the past, because of the circumstances that led them to take place. But those things did not happen here with the Syhaari. You heard Spock—a few basic similarities between engine design elements does not mean my crew handed Kaleo’s people a copy of the Starfleet Technical Manual and a box of parts!”
“I have to be certain,” Xuur countered. “We are in uncharted territory here in relationship to the Prime Directive. The contact with the Syhaari is a rare confluence of events: a meeting with an early-stage warp-capable species that has evolved without us becoming aware of it. They are an outlier . . . and if their advancement was artificially stimulated by contact with the Federation, it would be a most serious issue.”
Kirk gave a sigh. “You’re looking to stop something that has already happened. You said it yourself, we’re going to change everything for Kaleo and her kind. We already have. We changed their worldview by meeting them in space, by opening their minds to the reality of other intelligent life in the universe.” He walked away a few steps. “If that inspired them to pour their intellect into creating a better warp engine, then the damage is done and I don’t regret it one bit! But I promise you, what those people have built was not the fruit of some sort of misguided boon from me or my officers. We kept them off our vessel during our first contact, only one or two of the most badly injured were kept in sickbay. Kaleo and Zond were shown some of the ship . . . but that’s all.” He took a breath, fixing her with his g
aze. “I won’t stand for baseless accusations being thrown around concerning the integrity of my crew, is that clear?”
Slowly, the intractable expression on Xuur’s pale face softened, returning to the pleasant aspect she had worn on their first meeting. “Forgive me, Captain Kirk. Sometimes I can press a point too far. It is a failing of mine I do my best to keep in check. But you must understand, your record.” She stopped and reframed her words, bowing her head slightly. “I had to be certain. I had to hear it from you.”
Kirk considered her for a moment. When the emissary allowed her carefully constructed diplomatic façade to drop, she was a very striking woman, and he had to admit, he was interested in knowing the real Veygaan Xuur. “I have an offer for you,” he began. “Let’s try this again, from the top. I’ll put aside all my preconceptions about the FDC and any snap judgments I may have formed on the nature of envoys. In return, you do the same for me. Forget Ambassador Fox’s secondhand opinions and make your own.”
“He really does not like you,” she said with a slight smile.
“The feeling is mutual.”
Xuur’s head bobbed. “Fair enough. But don’t think that I won’t take you to task if I find something I don’t like.”
She walked away, but Kirk found himself frowning. We just cleared the air, he said to himself. So why do I feel like the tension is still there?
* * *
“Mister Spock!”
The Vulcan turned as the Enterprise’s chief engineer came jogging up to him, his manner suggesting that he was troubled by something. Spock said nothing and waited for the human to explain; he found that in most circumstances an emotional being would be driven to share their immediate concerns with their fellows as quickly as possible.
“Do you have a moment, sir?” Scott held a tricorder in his hand. “There’s something I’d like to get your opinion on.”
There was a maintenance alcove a short distance away, and the first officer led the other man to it, so they could speak without being interrupted. Scott brought up a set of scanner readings on the tricorder’s screen and handed it to Spock. “This would appear to be sensor traces from the Enterprise’s secondary scan array,” Spock noted. “Low-bandwidth, passive wavelengths.”
“Aye, sir, just like the captain ordered. A discreet sweep of the alien ship, but at low power. Don’t want to seem like we’re invading their privacy.” Scott paused as the scan unfolded before Spock’s eyes. “By and large, nothing anomalous detected.”
“Until the sweep passed over the engine core.” Spock correctly predicted what the other officer would say, and the display proved him right. Large sections of The Friendship Discovered, mostly concentrated around the drive core and the four warp nacelles, read as inert and empty—a clear impossibility, given that Spock had seen several of those systems with his own eyes.
“There’s more shielding in there than I’ve ever seen,” Scott went on. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were sealed so tight, even their own crew wouldn’t be able to get a peek inside.”
“The Syhaari are overly concerned about the propagation of lethal exotic radiation throughout their craft,” said Spock. “Not unusual, given their negative experiences in the past. But even with that in consideration, the density of shielding present here is far greater than it needs to be.”
“It’s overkill, that’s what it is,” Scott added with a brisk nod. “The only way we could get a look in there was if we put our sensors into full-power active mode, and that would light up the Friendship’s threat board like a Christmas tree!”
“Not to mention the discourtesy such an act would show toward the Syhaari and Captain Kaleo.”
“If they did the same to us, I’d think it the height of rudeness, aye.” He tapped the screen. “Which begs the question, sir, if they’re so proud of building a warp three engine in a couple of years, what are they hiding?”
Spock had no answer that he was willing to voice. “Continue all passive scan operations, Mister Scott. Once we reach Syhaar Prime, we may find a more direct route to answers for the questions this data raises.”
“How’s that?” said Scott.
“We will ask politely.”
* * *
The door to the quarters given over to the diplomatic party slid open, and Envoy Xuur entered, her shoulders sagging as it closed behind her again.
The Andorian ch’Sellor looked up from a desk nearby, tapping the keys of a portable unit they had brought on board with the rest of their luggage. “Do you believe him?”
Xuur gathered a cup of tea from a food slot and found a chair to settle into. “He believes himself,” she replied. “Captain James T. Kirk is certainly as self-assured as I have been led to believe.” The envoy sipped her drink, then delicately removed the ritual headband she wore. Hidden on the inner surface of the band’s large jeweled centerpiece, a mesh of microelectronics glittered with captured light.
Ch’Sellor flicked a look at the monitor. “That is what the sensor says. According to all standard human bio-signature ratings, Kirk spoke truthfully. Heartbeat rate, pupil dilation, skin temperature, all within positive ranges. But the unit is not infallible.”
“That’s why we are here,” she retorted. “To make a judgment. And for now, I agree with the unit.” Xuur gestured with the headband. She went on, changing the subject. “You were able to observe and record everything that took place while I was on board the Friendship?”
“Yes.” He tapped another key, bringing up a playback captured from the optical modules secreted in the headband’s ornamentation. “I have already begun calibrating our bio-signatures for a Syhaari baseline. When the program is complete, we should be able to use it to read their body language and anticipate their emotional states as easily as those of any other species.”
“What is that device you wear?” A voice piped up from the monitor screen, and Xuur recognized engineer Hoyga’s earlier question.
“This one is quite perceptive,” ch’Sellor noted. “She might have guessed the ornament was more than you said it was, given time. Envoy, if the aliens become aware that we are covertly monitoring them, they may react poorly.”
“That won’t happen,” Xuur insisted. “We are entering the unknown here, my friend, and we need an edge.” She sipped at her tea again and gazed out at the stars streaking past the viewport on the far wall. “The Syhaari contact is too important to risk any mishaps. And the act of diplomacy is too sensitive to be left to guesswork.”
Three
In the immeasurable distances of deep space, the domain of the Syhaari would seem at first to be a great ellipse of cloud and dust—if one were capable of standing off at a range to observe such a phenomenon.
Like many star systems throughout the galaxy, the sun known as Sya was orbited by a handful of planets in orbits that were, by cosmic standards, close at hand. Beyond those, at a distance of thousands of astronomical units, an unusually dense cloud of icy planetesimals and proto-comet materials existed within a thick fog of dust. The wispy shell of gas and particles, trapped forever in strange equilibrium between the gravity of the isolated star system and the slow pull of the interstellar medium, surrounded the Syhaari worlds in a permeable globe that allowed in only the strongest light from nearby suns. For much of their existence, the simianoids who grew to sentience on their birthworld believed they lived in a barren, sparse universe, where other stars were few and far between. Only when they hurled their first crude space probes beyond the outer planets did they venture through the membrane surrounding them and see the true magnificence of the universe beyond.
The dense cloud—which ancient Syhaari astronomers had named the Great Veil—had not only kept them from seeing what lay past it, but it had also allowed their species to evolve in relative safety. The star Sya had formed on the fringes of a vast zone of nebulae, where new suns were being born, an area of great turm
oil. The Veil, formed from the remnants of stillborn superplanets that had never fully cohered, became the very thing that protected the nascent civilization from the sea of radiation that surrounded it. And now, millions of years on, the place the Syhaari called home sat like a great, dusty pearl on a blanket of riotous color, bounded by incredible fires of creation.
Two vessels, one a sleek, winged dart and the other a sculpture of disc and rods, fell toward the outer edges of the Veil at speeds beyond the velocity of light.
* * *
Sometimes the viewscreen just didn’t seem big enough, Hikaru Sulu reflected. The small window on the universe that sat before him across the bridge was too enclosed to gather in the sheer scope of what lay around the Enterprise. Not for the first time, the helmsman entertained the fanciful idea of what it would be like to work under a glass dome, if the walls and bulkheads all about him could suddenly be rendered transparent. It would be something powerful to see, he told himself. Even the comparatively keyhole-sized view they were getting of the protostar nursery was awe-inspiring—and perhaps that was for the best. Sulu could imagine himself mesmerized by the sight if the whole horizon were open to him, at once humbled and exhilarated by what it represented.
“It is quite an impressive display,” offered Arex at the navigator’s station.
Sulu was so engrossed in the view that at first he didn’t realize the lieutenant was talking to him. He smiled. “And then some, Arex.” With effort, he drew his gaze away. “How’s our heading?”
“Within optimal parameters,” piped the Triexian. “I estimate we will pass through the outer edge of the cloud shell in five minutes. Interception with Syhaar Prime will be approximately thirty-one minutes after that.”
Sulu accepted the report with a nod and peered into the hood of the sensor scope that extended out of his own control panel. A display there showed a basic tactical plot of what awaited them.
The Latter Fire Page 4