Worlds in Collision

by Judith

  Farl’s expression was brightening now, along with his color. That damnable Andorian love for intrigue again, Romaine thought. “What threat? What action?”

  “As I told you, the threat iss classified.”

  “Then what action will you be taking?”

  “Some we already have.”

  “Such as?”

  The apologetic look came back to Farl’s face. Romaine suddenly knew she wasn’t going to like what she was about to hear.

  “My trooperss have placed three of your staff in protective custody.”

  Romaine felt her blood turn to ice. “Who?” she managed to get out before her throat shut down in shock.

  “Specialist Lieutenant Stell. Specialist First-Class Slann. And Dr. T’Lar,” Farl said gravely.

  Romaine was stunned. She had seven Vulcans on her staff. Why these three?

  Stell was a computer technician, young, serious as all Vulcans were, specializing in library subsystems. Slann was on sabbatical from the Vulcan Academy of Sciences, studying historical methods of fault toleration and error detection in trinary data storage. And T’Lar was a paleoexozoologist researching cyclical patterns of extinction in adjacent planetary systems. What was their connection?

  “Why them?” Romaine asked, completely baffled.

  “Classified.”

  “Have they done anything or is it just suspected they might?”

  “Classified.” Farl’s eyes flashed again. “But for you, Miraromaine: it iss simply a safety precaution. There iss no definitive proof.” He shrugged, a gesture almost comical in battle armor.

  “May I see them?” she asked, though it sounded more like a formal request.

  Farl shook his head. “Access restricted. Again, my apologiess.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Alass, no.”

  “This stinks, you know,” she stated, her voice rising on each word. She was trying not to take her anger out on the commander, and not succeeding.

  “I am trained to prevent these occurrencess, Miraromaine. When my trooperss and I must take action, it meanss we have failed. I am familiar with the odor, yess?”

  Romaine turned to go, then hesitated. “Will this situation be changed in any way by the arrival of the Enterprise?” she asked.

  Farl smiled. “Ah, yess. I expect the situation to improve considerably by then.”

  Good, thought Romaine, though she suddenly doubted that she and Scotty were going to enjoy the kind of reunion she had hoped for.

  Kirk had never thought it odd that in the middle of a crisis he could feel good. He knew it was the rush of adrenaline that propelled him, made his steps light and his actions swift. But apart from the merely physical sensations, it was his mind and his spirit that somehow seemed to accelerate at these times. Too often he had seen other officers crumble in the face of multiple crises. But once Kirk had determined his way, no matter how slight and dismal that chance for victory might be, he kept at it until the way was clear. The ship sustained him, but it was the never-ending struggle to keep her that made him come alive. He felt that way now.

  McCoy joined him as Kirk walked down the corridor on D deck, heading for the brig.

  “Score one for the system, Bones,” he said.

  “The commodore knows about us meeting with Spock?” McCoy asked, holding his medical kit and tricorder against his hip to stop them from bouncing as he kept Kirk’s pace.

  “She authorized it. Had no choice.” He turned to grin at the doctor. “As a suitably senior officer who has volunteered for the job, I’m Spock’s counsel for the court-martial. She can’t deny me access. Or my client’s physician, either. I’m just following the rules.”

  They turned the corner at an intersection. Two of Wolfe’s troopers stood at attention at the end of the new corridor.

  “Good,” McCoy said. “I was afraid we were going to have to charm our way past those two. The least you could have done was tell me this over the intercom.”

  “Not good form to let Wolfe hear me gloat. If she’s monitoring infraship communications. Which she probably is.” Kirk approached the nearer of the two guards. “I assume the commodore told you to expect us?” he said arrogantly.

  It worked. The first trooper snapped a salute, usually not part of starship tradition, and barked, “Yes, sir!”

  Kirk blinked at the reaction his tone had elicited, then belatedly remembered to return the salute. “Carry on,” he said, then passed the trooper and stopped in front of the open doorway to the holding cell. It was outlined with the glowing transmission nodes of a security field. Spock waited on the other side of the doorway, hands patiently held behind his back.

  “Good day, Captain. Doctor,” Spock said, as if he had happened to meet them in the corridor by chance.

  Kirk and McCoy returned the greeting, then Kirk turned to the second trooper.

  “Turn it off, trooper,” he ordered.

  “Sorry, sir,” the second trooper replied. “Commodore’s orders. You may meet with the prisoner but without contact.”

  Kirk checked the trooper’s sleeve and name badge, then spoke quickly. “Sergeant Gilmartin, are you aware of the penalties set forth in General Regulation Document two hundred and twenty-seven, pertaining to treatment of prisoners on board Starfleet vessels: violations thereof?”

  “N-no, sir.”

  “Then I suggest you turn off that security field and allow this doctor access to the prisoner before you find out what those penalties are!” Kirk snapped, and then to give the sergeant a hint, added the word, “Private!”

  Sergeant Gilmartin sneaked a worried look at the first trooper and saw no reason for encouragement. “I’ll have to check with the commodore, sir,” he said cautiously.

  “Be my guest,” Kirk answered with a flourish of his hand.

  Gilmartin walked off to a wall intercom plate. McCoy leaned forward and whispered, “Is there a General Regulation Document two hundred and twenty-seven?”

  “Two hundred and twenty-seven B,” Spock amended matter-of-factly from the doorway.

  McCoy’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Kirk looked hurt. “Doctor! Would I lie about something like that?” He turned back to watch Gilmartin before McCoy could answer.

  Gilmartin returned from his intercom conversation, defeated. “We’ll have to scan you before you go in,” he said apologetically.

  “As set out in GRD two hundred and twenty-seven C,” Spock offered.

  “I’ll have to remember this the next time we play poker,” McCoy said as Gilmartin scanned him and Kirk with a combat tricorder and the first trooper searched the medical bag.

  “Whatever do you mean, Doctor?” Kirk asked innocently.

  “I mean that sometimes your bluffs aren’t bluffs.”

  “Only those that I know will be called,” Kirk said with a smile. “Remember that.”

  Sergeant Gilmartin, satisfied with his readings, told Spock to stand back from the door and then switched off the screen. As soon as Kirk and McCoy had entered the cell, the field hummed back into life. The trooper was going by the book.

  “It is good to see you, Captain,” Spock said. “I had assumed that Commodore Wolfe would countermand any attempt you made for a meeting.”

  “She didn’t have a choice,” Kirk said. “I’m your legal counsel.”

  Spock’s eyes actually flickered. Kirk saw it.

  “Until an experienced counsel can be assigned,” he quickly added.

  Spock’s eyes returned to normal. “A clever circumvention of the commodore’s wishes,” Spock said, a faint tone of relief in his voice.

  “It was Dr. McCoy’s idea,” Kirk replied as he crossed to the cell’s writing desk.

  “Indeed.” Spock watched dubiously as McCoy held a sparkling scanner in front of his chest, keeping track of its readings in the display window of the medical tricorder.

  “What’s all this, Spock?” Kirk asked as he stood by the desk. It was covered with large stacks of bound hardc
opies from the ship’s printers.

  “The commodore has denied me access to the ship’s computer. I find I must carry on my work with printed materials.”

  “That’s terrible,” Kirk said with a frown, and he meant it. It was one thing to sit in a chair with the weight and warmth of a real book and be transported by fiction, or philosophy, or the inspiring words of beings from far away or long ago. But to actually have to work with them, scan through them a page at a time, without the speed of a display or the computer’s indexing abilities, seemed barbaric.

  “I do find it most inefficient,” Spock agreed.

  “Did the commodore give a reason for denying you computer access?” Kirk asked, glancing at the titles of Spock’s hardcopies; agriculture and economics journals for the most part, though he didn’t understand how they fit into Spock’s duties.

  “No,” Spock said, rolling up his sleeve to let McCoy take a sample of blood for later analysis. “Though it is logical to assume that she does not want to risk me overriding any of the bridge or engineering controls.” He watched as his green blood filled the ampoule on the end of McCoy’s vacuum syringe.

  “Can engineering and bridge controls be overridden from a remote terminal?” Kirk frowned. They did share the ship’s computer as the main processing unit, but still…

  “I have always thought it would be possible, given enough time to work out the programming techniques,” Spock said. “And since the commodore has forbidden me access, I assume that she also suspects or knows it can be done.”

  Kirk made a mental note to request a system improvement in his next general report. If someone did manage to work out the programming techniques, the Enterprise could be at the mercy of any passenger, or invader, who had access to the most common type of computer terminal in the ship.

  “Assuming the commodore won’t object to a simple library reader, is there anything else I can get for you?” Kirk sat down at the desk and indicated that McCoy and Spock should join him.

  “I would very much appreciate the opportunity to meet with Academician Sradek,” Spock said as he pulled out a chair and sat.

  “And he with you,” Kirk said. “The academician came to my cabin the night you were confined to your quarters, asking the same thing.”

  McCoy looked at Kirk triumphantly. “Can’t wait for the emotion of a teacher/student reunion, right, Spock?”

  “On the contrary, Doctor. I believe I still have much to learn from Sradek.”

  “Why is that, Mr. Spock?” Kirk asked.

  “Sradek is an eminent historian who excels in identifying patterns from the past and applying them to modern situations. His analysis of the dynamics that led to the political unification of the Jovian colonies in your own system led directly to his successful peace proposals for the civil war on Katja Two.”

  “And earned him the Peace Prize nomination,” Kirk added.

  “Exactly. However, shortly after the cessation of hostilities on Katja Two, the academician was asked to sit on the Sherman’s Planet famine board of inquiry.”

  “Isn’t that old news, Mr. Spock?” McCoy asked. “We delivered new grain stocks there years ago.”

  “Quite right, Doctor. But the new grain did not take hold on the planet as quickly as had been projected. The economic ramifications in that quadrant were serious. Even more serious is the evidence of the Sherman Syndrome appearing on other agricultural worlds.”

  “The Sherman Syndrome? Sounds like a viewscreen act,” Kirk said.

  “It is quite in earnest, I assure you. The name refers to a complex pattern of crop failure, political mismanagement, and faulty economic planning on colony planets. An entire analysis division was set up at Memory Gamma to investigate the syndrome, though, to date, no useful conclusions have emerged. Cause and effect are extremely interconnected and difficult to isolate.”

  McCoy was unimpressed. “If you mean that sometimes not every new agricultural colony turns into a golden breadbasket the first time out, I don’t see any reason for concern. That’s just the risk of farming. Give the colonists enough time to figure out the intricacies of their new world and the yields will go up.”

  Kirk intervened. “Spock, does this have anything at all to do with the charges against you? If it doesn’t, I think we should put it aside for now.”

  “I was merely explaining why I was looking forward to meeting with Sradek so I might question him about his reasons for denying the Sherman Syndrome hypothesis. My logic does not grasp the basis of his arguments and I wish to be enlightened.”

  “Fair enough,” Kirk said, trying to roll things along. “Sradek is looking forward to enlightening you about that also and—”

  “The academician is not aware of my interest in the subject. I have not communicated with him since the last time I was on Vulcan.”

  “Then maybe he wanted to say hello just to be polite,” McCoy suggested.

  “I see no need to insult a respected Vulcan scholar, Doctor.”

  Kirk held his hands up. “Shall we get to the point, gentlemen. Please?”

  And they did. Once again, Spock recounted his activities from the time Commodore Wolfe boarded at Starbase Four and he was interrogated and confined to his quarters. Kirk went over Spock’s eidetic recall of the interrogation and agreed that the commodore’s troopers acted as if they had only indefinite suspicions to go on, not hard facts. But no matter how many times they analyzed the situation, not even Spock could reason out a logical conclusion.

  In the end, all they were left with was a series of facts and a string of unanswered questions. Someone had stunned the two troopers standing guard outside Spock’s quarters. That person or an accomplice had then gone to the dilithium lab and switched off the accelerator field’s shielding just as Scott’s tour group was in an area where they might have been killed by the resultant dilithium reaction, if the ship’s dilithium crystals had still been on line.

  Commodore Wolfe had come on board believing that Spock might be planning some treachery just like that. When it had happened, she was convinced of his guilt. But there were no fingerprints, no witnesses, no computer logs. Only suspicion.

  As they appeared to be running out of alternatives, Kirk brought up Wolfe’s enigmatic reference to T’Pel.

  Spock’s expression hardened. “Indeed,” he responded. “Did the commodore give a context for the term?”

  “No,” Kirk said. “Though I got the impression it was a name.”

  “Anyone you know, Spock?” McCoy asked.

  Spock lifted an eyebrow. “Among Vulcans, the name T’Pel is rather common, Doctor. I believe I know several T’Pels and am related to four others.”

  Kirk nodded. “The ship’s computer came up with more than fifteen thousand references, almost all of them Vulcan females.”

  “And the others?” McCoy asked.

  “Words from various languages. Lots of dialect terms meaning ‘to drink.’ Acronyms, product names, literary references.”

  “I assume you investigated further,” Spock said.

  “Of course. I asked the computer to pull out every T’Pel reference that could be cross-referenced to you.”

  “And?”

  Kirk shrugged. “I got biostats on your four cousins.”

  “Did you try cross-referencing T’Pel to any illegal acts or threats?” McCoy asked.

  “That was my next search,” Kirk said, “and I got nothing.”

  McCoy’s eyes narrowed. “Out of fifteen thousand references?”

  “Illegal acts and threats are not part of the Vulcan heritage,” Spock said. “That is a logical finding.”

  By the end of the meeting, it was McCoy who was most upset. “For someone facing court-martial for attempted murder, you certainly aren’t acting worried, Mr. Spock.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Spock said.

  “Since you’re so calm,” McCoy continued, “I take it you believe that the commodore’s case is so weak that you have no reason to think there is anything
for the rest of us to worry about?”

  “I mean nothing of the sort,” Spock said. “Though the case against me is weak, someone on board this ship did try to disable the Enterprise and kill one or more of the prize nominees. While I am in custody, the person or persons responsible will be free to try again on Memory Prime.”

  “And that’s nothing to worry about?” McCoy said, amazed.

  “Logically, Doctor, there is no reason to be worried. On the other hand, there is every reason to use whatever means possible to stop such an act.”

  “What act?” Kirk asked.

  Spock stated it like an elementary class lesson. “The act of killing the Federation’s top representatives of virtually all sciences and plunging uncounted star systems into a new dark age.” Kirk decided he would worry enough for the two of them.

  In engineering, Scott watched the main display board with relief as the engines stepped down to sublight and the Enterprise returned to normal space. Despite the jury-rigged repairs and the hours-long strain of factor seven, the circuits had held. Now his people had a full week of scouting around the Jefferies tubes, taking the time to do the repairs properly. And perhaps add a few more of my refinements to the system, Scott thought, though he knew they’d all groan at that. It had come to be a standing joke that the only similarity between the official Constellation-class equipment manuals and the Enterprise’s manuals was the line about manufacturers’ warranties being voided by tampering. In the Enterprise’s case, Mr. Scott had voided all the warranties years ago.

  Scott left engineering for his quarters. With his main concern out of the way, it was time to turn to the others. He supposed that Spock should top that list, but the science officer had extricated himself from worse situations, and Scott was certain something would work out. It wasn’t that he had such absolute faith in the Starfleet judicial system; it was that he had absolute faith in the captain.

  The person that he focused on instead was Mira Romaine. She had been the sanest, smartest, and nicest woman who had ever come on board the Enterprise. And, he thought, the prettiest.