Instead, M’Ress called out, her usually purring tone curt and clipped. “Commander. We are being hailed by a Syhaari ship. The Light of Strength.”
“Tormid,” Spock guessed, and M’Ress nodded. “Open the channel, Lieutenant.”
The viewscreen switched from the sensor probes’ telemetry to a grainy view of the Light’s command deck. Tormid came forward until he almost filled the image pickup, glaring out at them as if he were some great predator beast peering in at prey animals out of his reach. “You see what your foolishness has brought upon you, offworlders?” He turned away briefly and made a spitting noise. “Your Captain Kirk killed himself, and dear Kaleo too, as surely as if he had put a laser pistol to her head.”
“We maintained a life-sign lock on the Icarus until it was withdrawn,” Spock told him. “Despite the attack, no one aboard was killed.”
“They are dead now,” Tormid stated coldly. “These creatures know nothing else but murder, clearly.”
Spock raised an eyebrow. Like the Enterprise, The Light of Strength had also been looped into the communications feed from the Icarus. Tormid, Gatag, and the Syhaari elders had heard exactly what Spock had heard—the statement about questions that made him believe that Kirk and the shuttle party would be kept alive, if only until those queries were put to them. It seemed apparent that Tormid interpreted that message in a very different way. “I do not agree,” said Spock.
“Then you deny the evidence of your own eyes, Commander. There will be no diplomatic solution here.” Tormid sneered through the words, as if the thought of them sickened him. “Kirk’s folly in this only cements my intentions. Gatag and the Learned Assembly see things as I see them. These creatures, these Breg’Hel . . . they want a war? We will grant it.” He drew back from the imager, his manner changing. “Now a new choice lies before you. You may leave our space and go home to your Federation with your failure. Or come with us, and join in the defense of our worlds. I would think you might want an opportunity to avenge your friends.”
“The need for revenge is an illogical and unproductive emotional state,” Spock said plainly. “It solves nothing, changes nothing. It is not the mission of the Enterprise to be party to an escalation of violence.”
“I have never known one so bloodless. So calculating.” Tormid made the spitting noise again. “Then you may leave at your earliest convenience.” The Syhaari gestured to one of his crew, turning away.
“We’re not going to stay?” Lieutenant Leslie’s shocked whisper wasn’t quiet enough for Spock to miss.
The Vulcan answered both of them with his next words, and Tormid stopped to listen. “You misunderstand. As of now, I am in command of this ship, and my duty has not changed. The Enterprise will accompany the Syhaari flotilla, and we will render assistance as required. But only toward the goal of resolving this dispute as peacefully as possible.”
Tormid’s expression froze for a moment, and then he let out a yelping series of guttural snorts. He was laughing. “Follow if you wish,” he grunted, “and if we happen on your dead we will give them back to you. But in the meantime, stay out of our way.” The screen flashed to gray static as he cut the channel.
Spock looked away to find every eye upon him, awaiting his next order. He settled on McCoy, whose grim scowl had not shifted a single iota. “Doctor, make sickbay ready for multiple casualties. I would also advise you to prepare a cargo bay as additional ward space, in the event it is needed. If a battle takes place, we may need to provide medical aid.”
A dozen emotions warred across McCoy’s face in the space of a few seconds, and Spock looked on impassively, letting his fellow officer come to the inevitable conclusion in his own time. At length, the human nodded. “All right, Spock. You’re in command. I’ll get it done.” Then McCoy leaned in, dropping his voice to a whisper. “But when the shooting starts—and with a man like Tormid with his finger on the trigger, it will start—you’re going to have to decide how many more lives you’re willing to lose.”
“I do not consider the captain and the Icarus crew to be lost.” Spock said the words without being aware of them. The answer came from nowhere, but now that it had been voiced, he felt certain of it.
McCoy saw that conviction in his eyes. “I hope you’re right.”
* * *
They had no choice but to evacuate the shuttlecraft after it had been towed into the cave-like landing bay of the largest Breg’Hel ship. Smoke spilling from damaged duotronic circuits was filling the Icarus’s cabin, and Kirk waited until the last possible moment before activating the emergency release on the main hatch. He shoved Uhura and Xuur out first, then let Arex support Kaleo as the Syhaari captain half walked, half stumbled. She had burns on her right leg where an exploding power console had caught her with the edge of its discharge. Coughing hard, Kirk managed to salvage an equipment pack from the Icarus’s gear bay and staggered out after them. There was a pair of type-2 phasers in a side pocket of the pack, and he groped for them, his eyes still streaming from the smoke.
If blasting us is the Breg’Hel’s take on diplomacy, he thought, I’ll feel better carrying a weapon from here on.
“Gods, what a mess,” wheezed Kaleo, looking back at the stricken shuttle. Icarus was nose-down, painted with streaks of carbon scorching. Desultory flashes of sparks popped and fizzed along the stubby pylons where an engine nacelle had previously been attached. “An ill fate for a brave . . . a brave craft . . .”
Kirk nodded, casting around. His first impression of the alien landing bay resembling a cavern was not far wrong. As much as he could tell, the decks and walls of the ship looked as if they were cut out of a synthetic rock material, perhaps something similar to the thermoconcrete the Federation used for quick-build colony outposts. The entrance the Icarus had passed through was shut now, sealed by a copper-colored iris hatch. He tried to take stock of the dimly lit environment aboard the alien craft; the gravity was lower than Earth-standard, putting an unexpected bounce in his gait. The air was heavy and humid, oxygen rich with a peculiarly loamy odor—and then there was the heat. It was almost tropical, and he felt sweat beading his brow.
Kirk’s fingers found the grip of one of the phasers, and he drew it just as Uhura managed a warning shout. “We have company!”
Another smaller hatch on the far wall dilated to allow a troop of reptilian beings to come scrambling into the chamber. They moved with great speed, clambering over one another, some of them adhering to the curved walls as they advanced on the Icarus party. The aliens made the same bubble-popping speech sounds Kirk had heard earlier, but now there was an additional layer of verbiage, a series of rapid chirps that were almost birdlike in tone.
Instinctively, Kirk and his people drew together into a cluster as the aliens surrounded them.
“The Breg’Hel, I presume,” said Xuur, almost to herself.
At first, Kirk had thought the creatures walked only on all four of their limbs, but as they came upon their prisoners, several of them reared up onto their hind legs, their forelimbs flexing or reaching for tools that dangled from the metallic waistcoats they wore. Rising to a height of around three meters—with another meter of thick tail flicking behind them—the Breg’Hel were an odd mix of skinny form with athletic bodies. They were covered in an epidermis of tiny, sharply defined scales. Coloration was not uniform across the species—Kirk saw some that were bright green, others sky blue, some with patterns of black spots, others with white stripes. All of them had a common marking, a set of red rings around their forearms, but it wasn’t clear if that was naturally occurring pigmentation or something akin to an identity mark.
He immediately thought of a Terran gecko as the closest animal parallel to the Breg’Hel physiology. They shared the same kind of spade-like heads, wide mouths, and large, slit-irised eyes. For the most part, the aliens went near-naked, with little more than a series of support belts or surcoats to act as anchor poi
nts of the equipment they carried.
Some of them pointed dish-shaped devices in their direction, and Kirk hesitated, uncertain if they were weapons or scanners. He kept his phaser aimed down and away.
“If they wanted us dead,” said Xuur, anticipating his thoughts, “they would have not stopped firing at the shuttle.”
Above them, lean Breg’Hel clung to the rough ceiling and used extending batons to point at the shuttle crew, as if they were trying to herd them away from the Icarus. Arex let Kaleo find her feet and faltered, as if he didn’t want to leave the shuttle to the mercy of the aliens.
“Easy, Lieutenant,” Kirk told him. “Don’t give them an excuse.”
A canary-yellow Breg’Hel with white spots and black circles about its face came forward through the line of guards, and something about its body language, its swagger, told Kirk that this creature was used to being obeyed. It gestured at him, chirp-speaking in short, clipped bursts of noise.
Uhura still had a universal translator to hand, and she tapped a control on the side of the unit. A moment later, the alien language was rendered into the same synthetic voice they had heard out in space. “You are taken. There will be no resistance.”
“We are not here for violence,” Xuur began, and she laid a hand on Kirk’s gun arm. “We are here to talk.” She gestured toward the shuttle. “There was no need to attack us.”
“It was done to prevent escape,” chirped the Breg’Hel.
Kirk’s lips thinned. It had been touch and go, but Arex and he had put the Icarus down in one piece. If the aliens had wanted to hobble them, they had failed. As damaged as it was, the shuttle was still spaceworthy. The Class-F’s were tough little crafts, and Kirk was certain that, in a pinch, he could get the wounded bird back into space. If their erstwhile captors thought otherwise, then he was happy to let them remain mistaken.
“Is this how you treat all emissaries of peace?” Kirk snarled, his tolerance for deferential behavior slipping away.
“We have never met peace in the words of aliens,” said the Breg’Hel, its glistening black eyes taking him in. “Who is in command among you?”
“I am.” Kirk drew himself up, ready for the worst. “I am Captain James T. Kirk, of the Federation Starship Enterprise.”
“You address Zud’Hoa, secure-master of this starcraft. By my deed and word, you are to be held in our holding zone until we wish to question you.” The alien pointed a thick, fleshy finger at Kirk’s phaser. “That is a weapon. Surrender it and all others, or there will be aggression.”
“Captain . . .” Xuur gave him an imploring look. Reluctantly, Kirk tossed the pistol to the deck, then did the same with the other phaser in the pack. Outnumbered as they were, any fight would have been a short one.
The alien guards made no move to take the translator, Uhura’s tricorder, or the team’s communicators. That led Kirk to wonder what the Breg’Hel had determined of them from their own scans.
Xuur collected herself and made a slight bow. “Honored Zud’Hoa, I am Veygaan Xuur. I speak for the Federation. I respectfully ask that we might begin a conversation between our two nations in the spirit of peace and open exchange.”
“There will be conversation,” replied Zud’Hoa, making a slow motion with its head, “when we decide it is best. Until then, you will wait.” The guards came forward and shoved Kirk and the others forward with their batons. Then, very deliberately, the Breg’Hel officer approached Kaleo and peered at her face. “Another one. Unusual that you came to us willingly. More will be learned.” It stepped back. “Take them away.”
“What did that mean, sir?” said Arex as they were force-marched out of the landing bay and down a narrow, tubular corridor.
“I don’t know,” admitted Kirk as he watched Kaleo for any kind of reaction. Another one. He turned Zud’Hoa’s words over in his thoughts. That’s something you’d say if you had met a Syhaari before, but Kaleo told me her people had never encountered any other beings apart from us.
Then suddenly the Breg’Hel guards made them halt before another iris hatch, calling out in their atonal birdsong voices to activate a sound-sensitive lock. The hatch whispered open, and they were shoved into a shadowy compartment, partly lit by fat buds of bioluminescent plants that grew out of the walls.
There was already someone else in the holding chamber. A hunched figure in the corner, dimly drawn as Kirk’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. He immediately recognized a familiar scent—the musky perfume that he had always associated with Kaleo—and his question was answered.
The prisoner looked up, and Kirk saw a wide, round simian face, lined with age and exertion. Dark eyes widened as they found Kaleo’s shocked expression.
“Rumen?” Kaleo could barely speak the name. “Is it you? But they said . . . Hoyga told me she saw you perish!”
“Not . . . so,” said the other prisoner, his words rough and half formed, as if he had almost forgotten how to use them. “Not so, sister.”
Nine
“Report, Lieutenant,” said the captain.
Uhura sighed and offered him the tricorder. “No ventilation shafts, no access panels,” she replied, gesturing at the rough-hewn walls around them. “I’m no geologist, but at a guess our air is coming through the rock itself.”
“It’s porous?” asked Arex, then corrected himself. “It must be. How else would these light-plants be able to grow through it? But that means we might be able to weaken the walls . . .”
“You’re suggesting we tunnel our way out?” Envoy Xuur sat cross-legged on the floor, picking at one of the glowing buds, and spoke without looking up. “I neglected to bring a spoon.”
Uhura frowned. She could never tell if the Rhaandarite was being sarcastic or not, as the diplomat’s tone never seemed to shift off the same middling register. “The only way in or out is through that hatch,” she went on, concluding her report. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Kirk gave her a brief smile. “Don’t worry. We’ve been in worse places. We’ll get out of this one too.”
She believed him; she believed the captain would do all he could to get them back to the Enterprise in one piece. She just hoped it would be enough.
Uhura anticipated the next question he would have for her. “As for getting the word out . . .” The lieutenant drew her communicator and flipped it open. The usual clicking tone of activation was replaced by a dull buzz, showing that the device was unable to detect a subspace carrier wave. “There’s a large percentage of boridium in the material this ship is made of. It’s blocking any outgoing comm signal.” She hesitated.
Kirk saw her pause. “But?”
“But I might be able to create a boosted signal strong enough to punch through the interference. I’d need every communicator we have, to daisy-chain them.”
The captain considered her proposal for a moment. “Hold that thought, Lieutenant. But be ready.”
Uhura nodded, and her gaze slipped past Kirk to where Kaleo and the other prisoner were sitting in one of the holding chamber’s shadowed corners. Like everyone else, Uhura was just as surprised to see a Syhaari captive being held by the lizard-like Breg’Hel. At first, she had thought that Rumen might have been one of the crew aboard the ranger patrol ships that first fell victim to the leviathan, or some luckless survivor from the Hokaar outpost. But that didn’t seem to be borne out by the look of the Syhaari male—his uniform, a shipsuit much like Kaleo’s, was ragged and well worn. He reminded Uhura of some unfortunate left beached on a desolate island after a shipwreck. He was unkempt and hollow eyed, his fur overgrown and matted.
“Anything else?” Kirk prompted.
She looked away. “Just that.” Uhura pointed at the far wall, where part of the stone had been filled in by a roughly rhomboid-shaped piece of crystalline glass. Many of the glow-plants grew over it like ivy, hiding it from anyone who didn’t take a second look. “It resemble
s quartz, and there’s a low electrical charge running through it. At a guess, I’d say it was some kind of monitoring device.”
“Screen.” The other prisoner said the word in a gruff, low voice.
Kirk and Uhura turned toward him. “Say again?” said the captain.
Kaleo reached out to stop Rumen from getting up, but he slipped out of her grasp and rose unsteadily to his bare feet. “A screen. For displaying images. It is my punishment.”
Kirk shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“At a regular interval, they show me my crime.” As Rumen spoke, his words seemed to age him. “That is what they call it. Images captured of the deaths. Over and over again.”
“What deaths?” said Arex. “You mean the ships that were attacked?”
Rumen shot the Triexian a horrified look. “What ships?” He turned on Kaleo, his panic rising. “What does the alien mean, what ships?”
Kaleo sighed. “Much has happened in recent spans. There have been grave losses.”
The older Syhaari fell back against the wall. “I would have known them.”
“Yes,” said Kaleo sadly. “You knew them all.” She looked toward Uhura and the others. “Rumen is one of my oldest friends, a pioneer of our starflight program. He was my instructor during my training. But he was declared dead cycles ago, after the . . .” She faltered, losing her momentum.
“I was the pilot of The Searcher Unbound,” said Rumen, his gaze turning inward.
“Tormid’s vessel,” said Xuur quietly. “The other explorer ship.”
“The Assembly chose me,” he went on, laboring over each word. “To be at the helm. They believed I would temper Tormid’s more impulsive tendencies. I failed.”
Kirk gave Kaleo a level look. “We were told that the Searcher’s crew were killed during a catastrophic malfunction. Tormid and Hoyga were the only ones who made it back alive.”
The Latter Fire Page 15