by Star Trek
It was therefore Valdore’s mission either to expedite the work of Ehrehin and the Empire’s other premier warp engineers, or to buy them whatever time they might need to gain the technological upper hand. Using whatever means might prove necessary.
Valdore stared at the brown-and-blue world that now filled the screen that dominated the wall before which Terix stood. Coridan Prime itself was clearly the key to this business, because of its technology and its vast dilithium resources—both of which had to be denied to the worlds of the still-forming Coalition of Planets. The central world of the Coridan system must be the primary target for any attack, he thought. Regardless of Earth’s political role in the alliance.
But he also knew that a conventional military campaign against Coridan could generate many undesirable and unintentional consequences for the Empire. Coridan was home to some three billion people, whose wealthy, resource-rich society would doubtless be roused to considerable wrath should Valdore initiate a direct attack that could be traced back to Romulus.
Therefore the only solution to the problem was to launch a wholly unconventional campaign.
“Show me the most recent reports from Chief Technologist Nijil’s office,” Valdore said. “How far has he progressed on his warship-cloaking research since my…sabbatical from duty began?”
The bleak look on Terix’s face grew even bleaker. “Unfortunately, this new stealth technology remains adequate to conceal only small devices, such as mines or probes. It could be decades before it will become practical to use it to conceal an entire ship. I fear that the setback we suffered as a result of the loss of the original prototype cloaked bird-of-prey nearly three fvheisn ago may well have ensured that.”
Valdore scowled at the bleak memory of the explosion that had vaporized the experimental cloaked bird-of-prey Praetor Pontilus after its extremely power-intensive stealth system had caused a catastrophic antimatter containment failure. But he understood all too well that such losses, however tragic they might be, were necessary for the protection of the Empire.
“What about telepresence drones, then?” Valdore asked, barely suppressing a wince as he mentioned the project that had nearly brought his career—and his life—to an ignominious conclusion.
The centurion brightened. Switching the image on the screen to a schematic diagram of a modified T’Liss-class bird-of-prey, he said, “I am pleased to report that Doctor Nijil’s section has made significant progress in this area, Admiral. The telepresence systems used in the earlier prototypes have been rebuilt and greatly refined. In fact, several new drone ships now stand ready for combat duty, except…” The younger man’s voice trailed off, and his earlier expression of discomfiture returned.
“Let me guess. Nijil has no telepathic Aenar pilots in his care at the moment.”
Terix nodded unhappily. “We currently have no telepaths rated to fly these ships, Admiral.”
Why am I not surprised? Valdore thought. He had seen for himself how reticent Nijil had been about pushing his lone Aenar pilot past the point of brain damage or death, even when such extremes were demonstrably necessary for the success of the mission. Nijil was an obsessive, committed tinkerer when it came to the inanimate metals and ceramics and electronics that made up his hardware creations. But he was frequently far too soft for his own good—and for the good of the Empire—when it came to making harsh but necessary demands of the living, breathing “wetware” that sometimes had to be sacrificed to the cause of either science or warfare.
Valdore wondered if he could manage another Romulan slave raid against Andoria’s Aenar subspecies without drawing undue attention to the Romulan Star Empire—and without precipitating a concerted counterattack by several Coalition worlds before he felt confident that the Romulan military was ready to handle it.
Of course, such situations are tailor-made for intermediaries, he thought. He already knew whom he intended to contact about obtaining—discreetly—all the Aenar pilots he might need. With a career military man’s crisp economy of verbiage, he instructed Terix to contact the particular man he had in mind and to report back to him the moment he succeeded in raising him via a secure subspace com channel.
Dismissed, Centurion Terix placed his right fist over his left lung, his elbow over his heart in a textbook-perfect salute. He turned smartly and exited the room, leaving Valdore alone with his thoughts, and with the dathe’anofv-sen—the Honor Blade—that hung at his side. He drew it from its scabbard and considered its deadly brilliance as he balanced the fine weapon in the palms of both hands. He hoped that the actions he was about to undertake wouldn’t force him to feed the blade’s hungry, gleaming edge with his own life’s blood, though he knew he wouldn’t shirk from such a duty should honor demand it of him.
Finally satisfied that he now had at least an inkling of the strategy and tactics he would have to outline for the Praetor and his tribunes tomorrow morning, Valdore finally felt sufficient confidence to contact the only other people in the universe whose approbation meant more to him than that of either his military or civilian superiors.
Sweeping the stacks of papers and data slates to one side of the table, he activated the communications terminal before him and waited for the images of his wife and children to appear on the screen.
Five
Monday, February 3, 2155
Andoria
HRAVISHRAN TH’ZOARHI STOOD QUIETLY in the frigid breeze that moved continuously through the dimly lit, iceencrusted cavern. He closed his eyes and exhaled, sending plumes of vapor curling upward over his head. Having been raised in some of Andoria’s coldest climes, he found the chill wind stimulating and life-affirming, evocative of the simpler, happier days of his childhood. A time long before life’s inexorable and unforgiving circumstances had seen him take up arms to defend his people. Or had forced him to bury his beloved bondmate Talas, whose murder at the hands of a treacherous Tellarite diplomat—that zhavey-less swine Naarg, he thought—remained an open wound even now, months after the fact.
A time, he thought, his frost-caked antennae turning downward, when I was still just plain Shran.
But he found it difficult to extract any real, substantive joy from the raw, visceral sensation of cold air that flowed all about his body. For one thing, the tingling in his incompletely healed left antenna—it was still not quite three-quarters regrown after Jonathan Archer had cut it off in a ritual Ushaan-Tor battle—was a constant irritant, as were the headaches and feelings of vertigo the damaged sensory organ still caused on occasion. And despite the small crowd of quietly joyous people that now surrounded him—warm, welcoming folk who hadn’t hesitated to take him in after the Andorian military had summarily cashiered him for losing his command, the Kumari, to a Romulan sneak attack—he felt isolated, alone. However sightless the Aenar standing all around him might be, there was just enough tenebrous, microbe-generated light in the spacious chamber to spotlight Shran’s uniqueness here; Shran was the only blue-skinned mainline Andorian in the entire underground city of the Aenar.
Aside from their obviously unusual pigmentation—all of the perhaps five thousand Aenar who still dwelled beneath Andoria’s northern wastes were albinos—there was little to distinguish these people from their cerulean-hued cousins, at least visually. And like their far more common blue Andorian, the Aenar could not reproduce without the participation of four distinct sexes: shen, thaan, chan, and zhen. Also like Andorians, the Aenar possessed frost-white hair and prominent cranial antennae that not only provided EM-band sensory input but also swayed and danced in response to their emotions.
Watching the slow, stately approach of the shelthreth party, Shran considered the emotions that most distinguished Aenar from Andorian, perhaps even more than did the albino people’s unique and formidable telepathic abilities. For the Aenar were as gentle and pacifistic as Shran’s folk were passionate and contentious. Despite their diminishing numbers, an augury of imminent extinction in Shran’s estimation, the Aenar seemed to have made their
peace with a hostile universe in a way that Shran had never managed to do, and probably never would. He often envied them their upbeat outlook and their gentle serenity.
But he also sometimes quietly raged at them for their entrenched belief in passivity.
Yet he couldn’t help but wonder just now if either Andorian or Aenar was destined to survive without the other.
Without any conscious volition he could recall, Shran had begun the morning by mentally composing a poem about what was to occur on this day. Or perhaps it would one day become a song, with lyrics set to dirge-like music, inspired by Shran’s own losses as much as by Jhamel’s poorly suppressed grief for her brother Gareb, whose death had closely coincided with that of Talas. However it came out in the end, he already knew with certainty that if he ever managed to see it to completion it would be a sad, morose thing indeed.
And why not? he thought. After all, he was about to bid farewell to a woman with whom he once, if only very briefly, had hoped he might build a future, a shelthreth bondgroup, and perhaps children. They might even have created a future together that would bridge the vast gulf that separated two very disparate Andorian peoples.
Jhamel.
In spite of all the mental discipline he had learned to marshal during the many months he had dwelled among the Aenar, he now found that he was utterly unable to keep a rising sense of desolate melancholy at bay. He supposed that it must have set up a keening wail that was telepathically audible to everyone else in the room, despite the ingrained aversion of Jhamel’s people to intruding upon the thoughts of others without first securing their express permission.
Get hold of yourself, Shran thought as he watched the crowd part to admit the shelthreth procession, in which Jhamel was radiant in her snow-white gown, despite the semidarkness. Just wish her well. She deserves all the happiness you can imagine, and more.
“Thank you for that, Shran,” Jhamel said, stopping only a few long paces away from Shran, her mind speaking gently and sweetly, and apparently only to him. It was a silent sound, like the memory of delicate, crystalline bells. “And may you find such happiness as well.”
A second telepathic voice intruded then, and Shran immediately realized that this one was being mentally broadcast to everyone gathered in the room.
It was clear to Shran that the originator of this thought-stream was the white-robed woman who stood facing Jhamel and the other three members of her shelthreth party; Shran recognized her at once as Lissan, one of the Aenar people’s most respected leaders.
“My dear friends,” Lissan said wordlessly to the dozens of blind, silent, and eagerly attentive Aenar telepaths who stood around the shelthreth party in a broad ring, their collective breath rising toward the cavern ceiling in delicately curling pillars of ivory-hued vapor. “We have gathered to witness the joining of these four kindred souls in the bonds of shelthreth , the honored, sacred estate established in earliest antiquity by Uzaveh the Infinite, the omniscient and omnipotent creator of the world. As Uzaveh instituted the Great Joining that brought together the wisdom of Charaleas, the strength of Zheusal, the love of Shanchen, and the passion of Thirizaz to form the First Kin, so, too, do we sanctify today the shelthreth of these four.”
Shran allowed a small smile to cross his lips as he recognized the ancient names, familiar to him from the bedtime tales and devotions of his youth. He found it gratifying to discover that the similarities between the Aenar and Andorian peoples seemed to extend even to the ancient myths that made up the very underpinnings of their respective cultures.
Shran suddenly noticed that Lissan had lapsed into telepathic silence, her pause filled by a soundless, psionic murmur of approval that rolled across the dozens of onlookers like a wave. Shran assumed that the sheer positive intensity of these sentiments had ensured that his own decidedly nontelepathic brain could receive them.
Lissan motioned to one of the two Aenar males of the shelthreth group, a young man whose white ceremonial attire was not unlike that of Jhamel. He stepped forward, his milky, sightless eyes fixed directly ahead, his expression frozen in ancient ceremonial solemnity. He was of the same sex as Shran—a thaan—and appeared to be about Jhamel’s age, approximately fifteen years Shran’s junior.
“Anitheras th’Lenthar,” Lissan said, “will you become Whole, entering the blessed state of shelthreth with your entire heart and soul?”
The young man, whom Shran knew better as Theras, telepathically recited words steeped in age-old ritual as he took a step toward Lissan. “I will, without reservation or hesitation.”
“Onalishenar ch’Sorichas,” Lissan continued, addressing the other young male of the quartet with the same query. Shenar responded in the same manner that Theras had; he gently took Theras’s hand, his blind face refulgent with a look of almost religious ecstasy.
“Lahvishri sh’Ralaavazh,” Lissan continued, asking the ancient shelthreth question yet again. Vishri, the stolid young woman who stood beside the taller, more slender figure of Jhamel, stepped forward, recited the ritual words in turn, and joined hands with Shenar.
“Thirijhamel zh’Dhaven,” Lissan said, prompting Jhamel to step toward her three bondmates and telepathically recite the time-honored words. He hoped that the spirit of her brother Gareb was somewhere near, perceiving the proceedings by whatever means the Aenar departed might have at their disposal.
Even in the cavern’s low illumination, Shran found Jhamel’s innocent beauty gently awe-inspiring, and more than a little humbling. At that moment, he pitied the entire Aenar race for being unable to see her in quite the same way he did.
Get a good look at her, Shran, he told himself, while carefully schooling his mind to keep a low enough profile so as not to be casually overheard, least of all by Jhamel herself. You won’t be seeing much of her anymore. He tried to memorize every contour of her face, despite the strange, distorting shadows created by the cavern’s dim lighting.
Very soon, memory would be all he had of Jhamel. His small civilian transport vessel, the only real property he possessed now that he no longer drew an Imperial Guard salary, was already waiting for him, prepped and ready and tucked away in a convenient hollow in the ice and snow that lay outside this very cavern. Once he had said his farewells to Jhamel and her bondmates, he would be gone, seeking his fortune in the sometimes unsavory world of freelance interstellar commerce.
Shran watched in wistful silence as his beloved took the hands of Vishri and Theras, closing the tight circle of four. The shelthreth now complete, she projected her thoughts, quoting scripture that Shran attributed to an early liturgical codex of the Temple of Uzaveh.
“‘When you are Whole, as I am Whole,’ Uzaveh said, ‘then shall you return to my presence and assume your place at my side.’”
Lissan extended her arms above her head as though supplicating great Uzaveh Itself. “My friends, you are Whole. I now pronounce your shelthreth complete in the sight of the law, the people, and the Throne of Life of Uzav—”
As Lissan inexplicably paused, a ripple of confusion passed through the crowd, like a collective thought being broadcast on some channel Shran was unable to access. But the interruption and the oddly tense body postures of so many people were more than enough to alert Shran that something was terribly wrong.
Shran heard a buzzing hum, and it took a moment for him to realize that he was hearing it with his ears rather than within the interior spaces of his mind. The sound seemed bizarre here, out of place, but his months-long stay among the placid Aenar hadn’t so blunted his military instincts that he’d fail to recognize it.
Transporter beam, he thought as the sound of a materialization sequence ceased but for the confusing echoes it continued to cast across the length and breadth of the voluminous ice cavern. Concentrating hard to avoid being overwhelmed by the alarmed telepathic gabble swiftly rising around him, he turned quickly in a circle, seeking to locate the intruders.
A brilliant energy-weapon discharge, as blue as heart-blood, lance
d the air nearby, betraying the location of at least one of the intruders. Acting on instinct, Shran dived to the icy ground to lower his profile as a target, seeking cover even as he reached into his heavy jacket in search of his sidearm.
Two more blasts sliced the chill air, filling it with the tang of ozone as he realized that he was unarmed. He felt utterly naked. This is the last time I follow rules written by pacifists, he thought with a pungent curse, not wishing to dwell on what usually happened to pacifists whenever they encountered unscrupulous aggressors.
Jhamel!
“Shran!” She was crying out in panic inside his mind.
He rose to a crouch, searching for the shelthreth party, but without any immediate success thanks to the confusion all around him. He struggled to ignore the collective terror that filled his mind, as well as the numerous inadvertent jostles and kicks that the fleeing crowd was inflicting on him.
Shran was soon relieved to find Jhamel not far from where she had originally stood, despite the sea of swiftly moving, agitated bodies that prevented him from reaching her quickly. Jhamel clung to the hands of two of her bondmates, Shenar and Vishri, both of whom seemed utterly paralyzed with terror. Shran noted that Theras had apparently vanished, and wondered if he had simply fled the side of his shelthreth partners. Lissan had remained beside them, standing proudly, apparently trying to quell her people’s fears and direct an orderly exit of the cavern.
Before Shran could make his way through the panicked crowd toward Jhamel, a blast caught Lissan squarely in the chest, causing her to crumple to the ice like a rag doll. A hulking, rifle-wielding form, bundled tightly in thermal gear, abruptly came into view and tossed a small metallic object onto Lissan’s insensate form.
She abruptly disappeared in a shower of ruddy sparkles.
The combined flashes of weapons and other transporter beams soon raised the light level across the cavern enough to enable Shran to see the partially exposed faces of the nearest attackers quite clearly. He recognized their distinctive jade-green skin immediately.