“This isn’t cheating on an exam, Julius. You deliberately and knowingly gave technology and weapons to a race of people who are& clearly planning to use these things against someone else.”
“The Falorians aren’t aggressive, they’ve never—”
“They’ve never had the kind of an edge that you gave them,” Kirk continued. “You don’t know what they’ll do now that they’ve got it. You’ve admitted that they’ve already double-crossed you, and God knows what they’ve got in mind for the Federation. Alex has every right to feel angry, betrayed, and disillusioned.” His voice softened. “But I doubt very much that he hates you.”
Julius didn’t look at him. His jaw tightened and his throat worked. “I wish there was some way I could undo this. I wish I’d never laid eyes on this place, or the Orions, or Lissan.”
[169] “We can’t do anything but wait until the scientists come back with their report,” Kirk told him.
Julius groaned. “I hate waiting. I want to be doing something.”
“Now that,” Kirk said, “is one thing we have in common.”
Scott stifled the urge to wrap his hands around Kevin Talbot’s throat and throttle him. It was this desire, he mused, that had kept him from going into research and development and placed him in the engineering room of a starship instead. He was used to accomplishing his miracles quickly and under the sort of pressure that made today’s situation feel like a day at the beach.
Despite Scott’s efforts to keep up to date on the latest technological breakthroughs, he knew that Talbot was about three steps ahead of him in that respect. But och, it was agonizing watching him put the pieces together, slow as a bear in midwinter.
Finally, he could take it no longer. He leaned over and touched a few panels.
“Hey, what are you—” Talbot stopped in mid-sentence. “Oh. Oh, my.” He, Scott, and the rest of the engineering team leaned over the screen, barely breathing, as they watched the nanoprobes dance across the screen.
They were witnessing a test, and as Scott began to understand exactly what was transpiring, he felt the skin at the back of his neck prickle.
“Lord ha’ mercy on us all,” he said, quietly.
Chapter Fifteen
“DILITHIUM CRYSTALS,” was the first thing Scott said to Kirk, Chekov, Alex, Julius and Skalli as they entered the secured “debriefing room.”
“What about them?”
“Think for just a moment about how important they are,” Scott said, obviously savoring his knowledge even though his face was pale.
“Oooh!” Skalli waved her hand as if she were still in class at the Academy. Kirk winced. For all her staggering intelligence, she was still such a youngster. Such a Huanni youngster. “I know!” She cleared her throat and began to recite, word for word, information that had been printed in the Academy textbook on the subject. “Dilithium is a crystalline substance used in every warp propulsion system on every known type of starship. Its unique composition regulates the matter/antimatter reactions that provide the necessary energy to warp space and therefore travel faster than light. Dilithium in its natural state is extremely rare and is found on only a few planets. [171] In 2286, Captain Spock traveled back in time and discovered a means of recrystalizing dilithium by exposing it to gamma radiation, but this technology is still in its infancy. The purer the form of naturally occurring dilithium, the more valuable it is because it will require less processing in order to render it usable. It will also last much longer than lower-grade dilithium because—”
“Thank you, Skalli, that will suffice,” Kirk said. Skalli settled back in her chair, her ears flapping gently with satisfaction.
“The short version is,” Scott said, “without dilithium to power our ships, the entire quadrant would slow to a grinding halt. Under those circumstances, he who has dilithium would be lord of all he surveys.”
“So you’re saying that the Falorians have found a way to destroy the present deposits of dilithium?”
“Not destroy, exactly. We’ve had a look-see at the nanotechnology they’ve developed, and judging by our computer simulations, the Falorians have concocted a nasty virus that will render dilithium crystals inert by altering their molecular structure. They’ll be just as pretty to look at, but they’ll no longer be suitable for regulating matter/antimatter reactions.”
“And from the sound of it,” Chekov said tiredly, “those Falorians have planted this virus everywhere.”
“How stable is the virus?”
“Unfortunately for us, very stable,” Scott growled. “It’s smaller than a dust mote and can adhere to skin, clothing, damn near anything. So you’ll be taking it with you when you go to check on your dilithium crystals.”
“Or when the miners go into the dilithium mines,” [172] Kirk said, the memory of his own recent visit to Rura Penthe still quite vivid.
“Like I said,” Chekov said, “it’s everywhere.”
“At least it’s not weapons,” Alex said. Everyone stared at him. “I mean, we were thinking that the Falorians were going to start a war or something. We thought millions of people might die.”
“They may not die initially,” Kirk said, “but when it’s learned that every starship, every major mining colony, every hunk of dilithium is now not worth a damn, then there’ll be violence, all right. A hell of a lot of it.” He looked up at his old friend. “Scotty. Tell me there’s something you can do about this.”
“Right now,” Scott said grimly, “there’s not a bloody thing. But I’ll keep running the computer simulations. There could be a flaw somewhere, something we haven’t thought about yet.”
“Julius, do the Falorians have a lot of dilithium stockpiled?” Kirk asked.
“Not that I know of, but as we’ve learned, I certainly don’t know everything about them.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Kirk said, thinking aloud now. “The Falorians have been a spacefaring race for some few centuries now. If they had access to dilithium, they would have used it before now. We’d have known that Falor or a Falorian-owned planet would yield dilithium, it’s easy enough to scan for. The Falorians could have been wealthy for hundreds of years. Why wait?”
“Maybe because they’re just greedy,” Julius said. “I mean, that I know. They are greedy little—well, they [173] might have been willing to postpone immediate gratification for longer-range riches.”
“Do they have that kind of patience, Julius?” asked Kirk.
Julius thought. “They do have patience, but we’re talking the kind of patience that is going to take generations to see fulfillment. I don’t know that many species have that.”
“And it’s a devil of a gamble,” Kirk said, continuing to follow this train of thought. “Too many things would have to occur in exactly the right fashion for this to work out to their advantage. Call it a gut feeling, but I think they’ve only recently come into this dilithium. Or they may not even have it yet. Maybe that’s why the Orion Syndicate is involved—to help them get this one last cache of dilithium.”
“One thing that I did notice,” Scott said, “was that the grade of dilithium the Falorians utilized in their testing was amazingly pure. About ninety-nine-point-nine-eight percent pure. I’ve never seen that level of purity before in my life. It must be a pretty bauble indeed to look at. And the value of such a thing on the black market would be staggering. I’ll bet that’s it, Captain. They’ve teamed up with the Orions to get a hold of and control this cache of pure dilithium.”
“So, they have weapons, they have the Syndicate, and they have a target that’s rich in dilithium,” said Chekov. “The question now is, where would they strike?”
“Oh, no,” Skalli breathed. Kirk looked over at her. Her ears drooped and she was trembling. “This ... this can’t be. ...”
[174] “Skalli, what is it?”
She turned a frightened gaze on him. “I can’t tell you. I’m not allowed to tell.”
“On whose orders?”
Tears welled in her eyes. “We are never supposed to speak of it, never, never. I’m sorry, I can’t.. ..”
Kirk reached over and grabbed her arms, shaking her gently. “Skalli, listen to me. You’ve remembered something that clearly might have an impact on what we’ve just learned. Don’t you think you need to tell us what it is?”
“You don’t understand!” she cried, gulping hard. “My people ... I can’t, I just can’t!”
Kirk released her. “Maybe you didn’t understand the full impact of what Mr. Scott has just said. Your people have recently joined the Federation, presumably because they share its ideals. Those ideals will be shattered like broken glass once dilithium becomes useless. Anyone who has any amount of dilithium will have the sort of power that could make him a god in some peoples’ eyes. Everything the Federation has worked for will disappear overnight. The galaxy will be a place where those with dilithium rule with an iron fist over everyone else. It’ll be absolute chaos, tyranny of the very worst sort imaginable. Is that the kind of galaxy your people want, Skalli?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Then tell us.” He reached for her again, very gently this time. “Help us.”
Her eyes met his and she swallowed hard. “All right,” she whispered. She took a deep breath and began.
[175] “You have been told that the Falorians wanted to leave Huan,” she said. “That’s not true. We—the Huanni—banished them. They had labored for us for centuries as slaves, growing our crops, mining the soil, building our cities. When we had sufficient technology that we no longer needed them, the last thing we wanted was to be reminded of them. So we put them on a ship and put them down on Falor.”
Kirk stared at her. Her lip trembled. “It was a lovely planet,” she said, defensively. “It had everything they needed to thrive. It wasn’t cruel to leave them there!”
Kirk said nothing. The whole room had gone silent, everyone no doubt sensing, as did Kirk, that they were witnessing a powerful revelation.
“They did just fine on Falor,” she continued. “None of us held grudges. We were happy in their success. We even extended the hand of friendship to them, but we were refused. They hate us, Captain. You can’t imagine how much they hate us. That’s why I wanted to become an ambassador, and why I was so excited about getting to meet a Falorian. I wanted to be a part of a new chapter in history, to help Falorians and Huanni be allies, even friends. We’re the same people, we ought not to let something that happened hundreds of years ago stand between us!”
“But Skalli,” Kirk said quietly, “no one ever told us that you had enslaved the Falorians.”
“We were ashamed,” she whispered, tears pouring unheeded down her face. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“You know my planet’s history. Until very recently, slavery, unfortunately, wasn’t at all uncommon. We [176] were able to see that it was wrong, admit it, and move on,” Kirk said. “We didn’t pretend it didn’t happen. You can’t heal what you don’t acknowledge, Skalli.”
“We were afraid the Federation wouldn’t take us, that if they found out, they’d ask us to leave.”
Kirk had nothing to say to this. Skalli was right, but for all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t the fact that Huan had enslaved and then abandoned half its population centuries ago that was the problem. There were many Federation member planets that had a far nastier and bloodier history. What mattered was who those people were now. The problem was, the Huanni had lied about their past to the Federation. That was more than sufficient grounds for expulsion if such drastic action was desired.
“What does this have to do with the dilithium?” he said at last, hoping the change of subject would help.
“I’m not sure, but there used to be stories. They’re now—what was the human term for them—folk stories, fairy tales. Tales about beautiful, powerful gems deep in the earth. You know the sort of stories, where the hero finds them and all kinds of good things happen. You wanted to know if the Falorians had access to dilithium. Maybe they don’t have any on their planet, but maybe we do. Huan. Maybe those folk tales are real, and the Falorians, who used to dig in the earth, knew it. And it’s a perfect excuse to attack us, to hurt us, as they feel we hurt them. They’d become very wealthy and exact revenge at the same time.”
Kirk’s thoughts churned. At first, he wondered—how could the Huanni not know that they had dilithium [177] deposits? As he had just said a moment ago, it was easy enough to scan for, and the Huanni weren’t foolish. They’d have scanned for it.
But what if something prevented the scan from reading correctly? Such things happened. Radiation, soil composition—there were more than a few things that could make a scan inaccurate. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.
It all made sense now. If the Falorians did indeed have ancient knowledge about hidden deposits of dilithium buried deep within Huan’s soil—knowledge of which even the Huanni themselves were ignorant—then of course they would want to control the dilithium trade. Destroying the efficacy of dilithium across the quadrant would make what few unaffected deposits there were fabulously rare. Thanks to the weapons and technology provided by first Julius and then the Orion Syndicate, the Falorians would easily be able to take Huan while the Federation limped along, crippled to the core. Eventually, of course, this “gold rush” of dilithium would fade. They already had the technology to recrystalize dilithium, but as Skalli had stated, they were still working on it. It would happen, yes, but it would take time. Perhaps years.
And in the meantime, the Falorians and all who associated with them would become wealthy and powerful beyond their wildest dreams.
He was so lost in the dire scenario that he didn’t hear Scott’s comments. “Sorry, Scotty, what was that?”
“I said, I’ll want to run some more computer scenarios.” Scott frowned darkly. “Something’s bothering me, [178] Captain. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll not be happy until I’ve figured it out.”
“In the meantime, what do we do?” asked Alex. “We’re stranded, we’ve got no way to warn anybody—
“It looks bad, yes,” Chekov spoke up. “But Captain Kirk has gotten us out of worse situations.” He turned to give what he doubtless thought was a reassuring smile of utter confidence to his captain. But to Kirk, it was only a mocking grimace.
It didn’t just look bad, it was bad. And he didn’t have the faintest idea what they were going to do about it.
Kirk lay awake in bed, thinking furiously. It had been almost two full Sanctuary days since he’d broken into the facility. At any moment, the Falorians could come for them. Right now, everyone was very carefully entertaining the fantasy that nothing was really wrong. But after seeing the research facility and learning about the truly diabolical plan the Falorians had come up with, Kirk was not about to make the mistake of underestimating Lissan. Lissan knew very well that they were hostages; he just hadn’t made the situation formal yet.
Chekov and Harper were frantically doing everything they could to try to get a message out, but Kirk knew in his heart that it was just a way to keep spirits up. Scott was running his additional scenarios, for whatever good that might do. Conceivably, he could come up with some way to reprogram the nanoprobe virus, but even miracle worker Scotty needed time and resources to perform his special engineering magic. And those were two things that were in very short supply.
[179] His door chimed. He glanced at the chronometer. It was 0214. He reached for a robe and donned it. “Enter,” he called.
The door hissed open and Skalli stood there. She looked terrible. “Captain Kirk? I’m so sorry to bother you.”
“It’s no bother,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie. Anything was preferable to being alone with his dark thoughts right now. “What’s the matter?”
“You know!” And she put her head in her hands and sobbed. “I’m so ashamed ... of my people, of myself ... Captain, I’ve been less than useless to you. I’m sure you regret the day we met.”
“Th
at’s not true.” Again, the comment was no lie, and it slightly surprised Kirk. He’d gotten more used to Skalli’s highs and lows, and they didn’t bother him nearly as much as they used to. “You have been invaluable. We’d still be stuck wondering what the Falorians were up to without your code-cracking skills.”
She waved a hand in angry dismissal. “Any Huanni could have done that.”
“I doubt that, but even so, no one else here could have.” He sat down next to her in the chair. They were both facing straight forward, and Skalli determinedly avoided his gaze and wiped at her wet face. “And as for your ancestors’ treatment of the Falorians, that’s hardly your fault. I bet you’ve never enslaved a single Falorian in your entire life.”
He said it lightly, but her eyes again filled with tears. “But we should have taken responsibility for what our ancestors did. You were right. We shouldn’t have [180] pretended it didn’t happen, even if we did want to be friends. Especially if we wanted to be friends. Friends apologize wh-when they’re wrong.”
She couldn’t know it, but her words stung. Kirk had been very wrong about Skalli. While she was still terribly emotional, she was intelligent, competent, and capable. She’d been the one to keep her wits about her and find shelter during what could have been a fatal sandstorm. She’d been the one to lock herself away with only sandwiches and Vulcan spice tea until she’d cracked a completely new code. And as for her outbursts, well, Kirk knew more than a few humans of her age who were that emotional.
“Well, then, let me be a friend,” he said, gently. “I misjudged you, and that was both wrong and foolish of me. You’re doing a marvelous job in a very stressful situation, and you have been a great asset to this colony.”
Now she did look at him. She swallowed hard. “R-really? You’re not just saying that?”
“Not at all. I mean every word.” He punctuated the comment with gentle pokes on her shoulder until she smiled and ducked her head. Her long ears crept upward from where they had been plastered against her head. Then she sobered.
STAR TREK: The Original Series - The Last Roundup Page 14