“Killed also,” said Idun, “but not by disease. They were private cargo haulers—engine components, EPS couplings, that sort of thing.”
“Their routes carried them well beyond the boundaries of Federation space,” Gerda noted. “They routinely ran into Orions, Athaban, Talarians.”
“It sounds like dangerous work,” said Gerda Idun.
“It was,” Idun confirmed. “A bit too dangerous for most other cargo haulers. But our parents were excellent pilots, and they never tried to take on more than they could handle.” She glanced at Gerda. “Until one day, they ran into a squadron of Pephili raiders.”
“It was a one-in-a-million encounter,” said Gerda, [99] recalling the stricken looks on her parents’ faces when they realized what they were up against. “The kind of thing that’s not supposed to happen out in space. We came out of a nebula and there they were, no doubt every bit as surprised as we were.”
Idun heaved a sigh. “Once the Pephili had our ship in their sights, they weren’t going to stop until they stripped us of our cargo—and our lives. Our father led them on a chase, but he couldn’t elude them forever. Finally, they hit one of our warp nacelles. Our parents knew it was only a matter of time before the cowards caught up with us, so they looked for a planet on which to set down.”
The memory was like ashes in Gerda’s mouth. “We found a class-M world and landed safely in the midst of some hills. But the Pephili came after us with a party of armed thugs.” She felt a lump in her throat and willed it away, knowing it wasn’t worthy of her. “They killed our parents, stole our cargo, and took whatever else they could rip from our ship. Then they left us there to die.”
Gerda Idun looked from one of the sisters to the other. “Just the two of you?”
Idun nodded. “Just the two of us. We were eight years old. And the land around us was barren as far as the eye could see. For several days, we lived on scraps we found in our ship’s pantry. Then we ran out of even those. We fully expected to starve to death, but we didn’t have the courage to set out across the wastes and try to do something about it. So we sat and waited quietly for death.”
“Then,” said Gerda, “a ship appeared.” She could see it in her mind’s eye—a dark speck against a pale orange sky, growing bigger with each passing moment. “It was [100] a Klingon scout ship, but we didn’t know that. We thought it might be the Pephili, coming back to kill us as they had killed our parents. So we ran into the hills and hid.”
“Still,” said Idun, “they found us—a squad of Klingon warriors, surprised to find a strange ship on a world they had long ago made part of their empire. We had never seen Klingons before, so we didn’t know what to expect of them. But they took us back to their ship and presented us to their captain, a warrior named Warrokh.”
“He seemed to like something about us,” said Gerda, “though I can’t imagine what it was. We were pathetic—cringing, mewling little girls, too frightened to even look him in the eye. As it happened, he and his wife Chithar were childless. Warrokh thought it would please her to take us in and make us their own.”
Idun nodded, her eyes glazed with memory. “And that is what they did.”
Gerda Idun looked at them, her expression one of disbelief. “These Klingons ... adopted you?”
Gerda nodded. “They took us into their House and made us their legal heirs, according us rights and privileges as if we were their own blood.”
The newcomer winced. “But Klingon society is so ... different from ours. It must have been ...” She seemed to search for a word.
“Rigorous? Painful? Terrifying?” Idun suggested. “It was all of that—and more.”
“And we were still mourning our parents,” Gerda noted, “wrestling with the feelings any newly orphaned human child would have felt.”
[101] Gerda Idun’s brow puckered. “You say ‘human’ as if you’ve become something else.”
“We have,” Gerda told her. “We’ve become Klingons.”
“Not literally, of course,” said Idun. “But in all the ways that matter—and there are many of them.”
Gerda Idun seemed to consider the remark. Finally, she said, “How different our lives have been.”
“Have you had any contact with Klingons?” asked Gerda.
The newcomer shook her head. “Where I come from, Klingons are our enemies—the enemies of humans, that is.”
Idun grunted. “That was once true of our universe as well. It was only about forty years ago, at the historic Khitomer Conference, that the situation began to change.”
“Now,” said Gerda, “the Federation and the Empire are no longer enemies.”
“Though,” Idun added, “I sometimes think there are those in the Empire who would have it otherwise.”
Gerda Idun laughed. And though Idun wasn’t normally given to laughter, she laughed along with her.
Gerda saw something in the newcomer’s eyes then—something that appeared and then disappeared with the speed of a stray thought. It was so quick, so fleeting, that she had to wonder if it had happened at all.
“Well,” said Gerda Idun, “it was nice talking with you, but I really ought to get some sleep. With all that’s happened, I’ve been up for about twenty hours now.”
“We understand,” said Idun.
“Besides,” the newcomer added with a sly little [102] smirk, “I don’t want your captain to think we’re in here plotting to take over the ship.”
Idun chuckled. And she wasn’t the chuckling sort—not any more than Gerda was.
The navigator watched for that look in Gerda Idun’s eyes, but she didn’t see it this time. Even more so than before, she had to wonder if it had merely been a figment of her imagination.
“I hope we’ll be able to do this again,” said Gerda Idun. Then she got up and headed for the door.
“Wait,” said Idun, getting to her feet as well.
Gerda Idun stopped and looked back at her. “Yes?”
“You’ll need a change of clothes,” said the helm officer.
Their guest dismissed the idea with a gesture. “I can get a set from the replicator.”
“You can,” Idun agreed. “But why waste the energy it takes to replicate new garments when we can lend you some of ours?” She turned to her sister. “What do you think?”
Gerda thought it made sense. Waste was a sin, or so she had been brought up to believe. “We have more than we need.”
Gerda Idun looked grateful. “All right. If that’s the way you feel. Thanks—both of you.”
Idun inclined her head. “Thanks are unnecessary.”
“You would do the same for us,” Gerda said—and found herself watching their counterpart’s reaction.
The woman nodded. “I would like to think so.”
Then she really did leave. As the door to Idun’s quarters whispered closed behind Gerda Idun, Gerda’s [103] sister turned to her with an expression of approval on her face.
“Remarkable,” she said.
Gerda nodded. “Indeed.”
But she wasn’t sure that she approved of Gerda Idun as much as her sister did.
Chapter Eight
VIGO WOKE TO FIND a face looming in front of him. A Pandrilite face. A very angry Pandrilite face, with a scar running down the side of it.
“What did you do to the shuttle?” the Pandrilite demanded.
Vigo was sitting in a chair with his hands tied behind him, a massive headache throbbing behind his eyes. His ribs hurt too, as if someone had punched him repeatedly. But then, he reflected, phasers were designed to do damage.
“I asked you a question,” said his interrogator.
Vigo remained silent. If the fellow wanted help with his shuttle repairs, he would have to find it elsewhere.
The intruder stepped back, giving the weapons officer a better view of his surroundings. He was in the installation’s mess hall. Neither Sebring nor Runj nor any of the [105] installation’s Starfleet personnel was in sight, but there were si
x or seven Pandrilites in evidence.
To Vigo’s consternation, Ejanix was one of them. It angered the weapons officer to think that these marauders could hurt his friend and there wouldn’t be anything he could do about it.
Then he caught Ejanix’s eyes and saw that his mentor didn’t share his concern. He looked annoyed, even a little fidgety, but hardly in fear for his life.
Vigo didn’t understand. As he was trying to puzzle it out, his interrogator leaned closer again.
“It’s only a matter of time before you tell me,” he insisted. “Why not save us all some trouble?”
Vigo averted his eyes.
When he sabotaged the shuttle, he had wondered if the intruders had another one at their disposal. Judging by the intensity with which he was being questioned, he guessed that they didn’t.
So until they could fix this one, they were trapped here.
The muscles in the intruder’s jaw rippled. Then he smiled, though his eyes remained hard with restrained anger.
“We have an interesting situation here,” he said. “There are three of you I can question—three of you who sabotaged the shuttle. However, I only need an answer from one of you, which makes the other two expendable.”
That got Vigo’s attention. Still, he kept his eyes turned away from the intruder.
“Maybe you don’t think I’m determined to get an answer,” said the fellow with the scar. “Maybe you require [106] a demonstration. Or maybe you would like to be the demonstration.”
Vigo remained silent.
His interrogator grabbed his face suddenly, as if he had every intention of tearing it off. His fingers were strong, viselike, even by Pandrilite standards.
“I’m warning you,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.
But Vigo didn’t talk. Nor would he.
The intruder studied him for a moment, his eyes full of cold fury. Then he let go of Vigo’s face, took a step back, and said, “Kill him.”
“No!” Ejanix blurted, stepping in front of Vigo as the intruder’s men raised their weapons. He looked horror-stricken. “What in the name of the Virtues are you doing?”
The scarred man didn’t take his eyes off Vigo. “Eliminating a nuisance,” he responded evenly.
“You promised me no one would die,” Ejanix protested. “You said that, Kovajo.”
The intruder’s men looked to him. He considered Vigo a moment longer, his lip curling as if in disgust. Then he gestured for his subordinates to lower their weapons.
Kovajo turned to Ejanix. “I’m sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound especially remorseful. “You’re right. When we discussed the ways in which you could help us seize this installation, I said no one would die.”
Suddenly, his fist was hurtling at Vigo. The weapons officer barely had time to turn his face to avoid the impact. Still, the blow was a heavy one. It dazed him, sent the chair he was in crashing to the floor.
A moment later, he felt himself being picked up. The [107] front legs of his chair hit the floor again, and he again found himself facing the man Ejanix had called Kovajo.
Vigo tasted blood as he braced himself for another blow. But it didn’t come. At least, not right away.
“On the other hand,” said Kovajo, his voice marked by an eerie calm, “I didn’t promise that no one would be punished.” His left eye twitched as if with barely restrained fury. “And punished they will be.”
“There’s no need,” Ejanix insisted. “They’re your prisoners already. They can’t hurt you.”
“Maybe it’s not for what they’re going to do,” said Kovajo. “Maybe it’s for what they’ve already done.”
“I did it by myself,” Vigo insisted through the thickening bruise on one side of his mouth. “The others had nothing to do with it.”
That elicited a smile from Kovajo. “How noble,” he said. “You have a lot to learn.” He glanced at one of the Pandrilites behind him. “Take him away.”
Vigo turned to his mentor. Ejanix looked torn, conflicted. But he didn’t say anything more as Kovajo’s men untied Vigo and pushed him out the door.
As Gerda always did when she sat down at her navigation console, she checked all her monitors for problems. Then she ran a quick diagnostic to make sure all her instruments were working as they should have been.
Since there were neither problems nor malfunctions, she turned to her sister. Idun was finishing her own set of diagnostics at the helm controls—her face caught in the glare of the bridge’s forward viewscreen, where the anomaly was glowing with dark purple fury.
[108] They hadn’t discussed Gerda Idun since their meeting in Idun’s quarters. However, Gerda had been thinking about their counterpart a great deal.
In the course of her reflection, she had come to believe that it wasn’t her imagination after all. She had seen something in Gerda Idun’s expression that was at odds with the persona she presented—something that made Gerda mistrust her, despite the woman’s resemblance to her.
And yet, Idun appeared not to have noticed anything. Or if she had, she hadn’t said anything about it—a situation the navigator meant to investigate in short order.
“It was interesting,” she said, “how different our counterpart was from either one of us. Without a Klingon upbringing to nurture her better qualities, she might as well have been any human.”
Idun looked at her as if she had brought a pet targ onto the bridge. “I’m a little surprised to hear you say that. I thought she was a lot like you.”
“Like me?” Gerda asked. It was about the last thing she had expected to hear. “She’s nothing like me.”
“Isn’t she?” Idun asked. She shrugged.
“Nothing at all,” Gerda insisted, unable to see how her sister had come to such a conclusion.
Idun turned back to her instruments and fell silent for a moment. However, her expression indicated that she hadn’t wavered in her opinion.
“In any case,” the helm officer said finally, “we need to take Gerda Idun under our wing. Being from another universe, she must feel quite lost here.”
“No doubt,” said Gerda.
But she didn’t feel the same sense of responsibility [109] that her sister did. Obviously, Idun had indeed missed what Gerda spotted in the newcomer’s expression, or she wouldn’t have been speaking of her this way.
But I saw something, Gerda insisted silently. I did. I’m certain of it.
“After all,” Idun continued, “our blood runs in her veins. That makes her family.”
Gerda didn’t look at it that way. Members of the same house didn’t keep things from each other, and it seemed to her that Gerda Idun was doing just that. But without the least shred of proof to support her suspicions, the navigator wasn’t ready to oppose her sister’s point of view.
“We will do what we can,” she said.
Then she turned back to the viewscreen, where the anomaly glared at her like a great, blazing eye—as if daring her to unlock Gerda Idun’s secret.
Phigus Simenon arrived at the briefing room precisely on time, only to find that the captain was the only one there.
“Where is she?” the engineer asked brusquely.
Picard frowned. “I expect our guest and Mr. Joseph to join us at any moment. And I believe the proper protocol is ‘Where is she, sir?’ ”
Simenon eyed him. “You’re kidding, right? Maybe I’ll call you ‘sir’ when you get to be twenty-nine.”
The captain tried to suppress a smile, but didn’t do a very good job of it. “Which will be soon. My birthday is coming up, you know.”
The engineer harrumphed. “Sounds like someone is fishing for a present. Unfortunately—”
[110] Before he could finish, the door slid aside and Joseph walked in. And there was someone behind him—someone tall, blond, and female, and well built in a human sort of way.
She also bore an uncanny resemblance to Gerda and Idun. In fact, if he hadn’t known better, he would have said she was Gerda or Idun.
Picard got up as the woman walked into the room. He was nothing if not gallant. “Lieutenant Asmund,” he said, “please have a seat.”
“Thank you,” the woman said.
Then she caught sight of the Gnalish.
“This is Mr. Simenon,” the captain said, “our chief engineer. Mr. Simenon, Gerda Idun Asmund.”
The woman stared at the engineer for a moment.
“Something wrong, Lieutenant?” Simenon asked.
Gerda Idun shook her head as she, the captain, and Joseph sat down. “No, nothing. It’s just that ...”
“Yes?” Simenon prompted.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’ve never met a Gnalish before, that’s all.”
The engineer found the remark disconcerting. “My people don’t exist in your universe?”
“Oh,” said Gerda Idun, “they exist. But they tend to keep to themselves. It’s rare for any of them to leave Gnala.”
“Actually,” Joseph interjected, “that’s not too far from the situation in our universe. Mr. Simenon here is only the sixth member of his species to join Starfleet.”
“Fifth,” Simenon said, correcting him. “But who’s counting?”
[111] Gerda Idun smiled. “In any case,” she told the engineer, “it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Simenon took a moment to absorb the effect of a smiling Asmund. It was amazing how different she looked from Gerda or Idun when she did that.
The captain addressed their guest. “Mr. Simenon is trying to gather as much data as he can before he attempts to formulate a theory regarding your appearance here.”
Gerda Idun nodded. “I appreciate that. Obviously, I’ll do anything I can to be of help.”
She seemed to Simenon to possess the Asmunds’ strength and sense of purpose, tempered with some of the softer human characteristics. A pleasing package, he decided—and he wasn’t an easy person to please.
“All right,” he said, getting down to business, “tell me everything you remember before you arrived here. Sights, smells, sounds ... don’t leave anything out.”
Gerda Idun did as he asked. She seemed to have a good memory for details. But then, so did her counterparts.
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