THE COVENANT OF THE CROWN

by Howard Weinstein

  Certainly not. If McCoy wanted to be a wet blanket, so be it. Most birthday parties on board the USS Enterprise were small affairs, with only the closest friends of the guest of honor. But this was to be a rare, shipwide gathering; after all, even the youngest crew members had come to regard the doctor as a crotchety, eccentric uncle, the kind who scolded you as a kid and then passed you a piece of candy when your mother wasn’t looking. Everyone knew McCoy’s caring went far deeper than mere professional responsibility.

  And Kirk knew that mutiny was a distinct possibility if he canceled the whole idea after all the plans had been made and anticipation built. If he needed a last word to allay his fears, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott was there to offer it, with that touch of common-sense insight he often displayed—whenever he could be coaxed to look away from his engines.

  “Put McCoy in a room with the ladies, plenty o’ good drink, some fine food, and a bit o’ the singin’ ” said Scott, “and he’ll snap right out o’ whatever’s ailin’ him.”

  Later, Kirk gave the signal on schedule. In twos and threes, off-duty crewmen headed for the large rec room on deck seven. The tough part remained for Kirk himself to master—getting McCoy to stop counting gray hairs long enough to attend the celebration.

  “Let’s go, Bones,” Kirk said to the inert body curled on McCoys bunk.

  “Let me lie in the dark. Maybe I’ll stop getting older, McCoy sighed “If I had leaves at least I’d stop photosynthesizing.”

  “You’re a doctor, not a plant,” Kirk said, grunting as he grabbed McCoy’s arm and pulled him to a sitting position. He felt slightly foolish. “Come on. I have no intention of carrying you.”

  “Where aren’t you carrying me?”

  “To the rec room.”

  McCoy tried to slump back into his fetal position, but Kirk held his arm. “Aww, leave me alone, Jim. What am I going to do in the rec room in this state of mind?”

  “You’re going to snap out of it, that’s what. I’ve planned a chance for you to engage in one of your favorite pastimes—baiting Spock while I play chess with him.”

  McCoy let out a long slow sigh, like a deflating tire. “Well, when you put it that way.” He got to his feet and followed Kirk out. McCoy’s glumness made the excursion to deck seven somewhat less cheery than a stroll to the gallows, and Kirk suppressed the urge to go back.

  They turned into the rec room and the doors slid open to reveal a completely dark cavern. Kirk pushed his friend forward and the lights suddenly flashed on, strobing in red, blue, yellow and white. Without uttering a sound, McCoy jumped back at least three feet, landing squarely on Kirk’s toe. The hidden crowd of crewmen popped up from behind tables and planters, shouting, “Happy birthday, McCoy!”

  Braced for a look that might kill, Captain Kirk turned to the doctor. McCoy’s eyes were glazed with shock. The shout gave way to applause and laughter, and a lovely lieutenant from the medical staff placed a drink—and herself—in McCoy’s hand. Finally, he allowed himself to be drawn into the festivities—but not before he shot a grinning glance back at Kirk. “Jim, I’ll get you for this!”

  Kirk chuckled and found himself next to his engineer. “I guess you were right, Scotty.”

  “Well, it’s not just engine I know, sir,” Scott said, his brow furrowed in false modesty. “The only problem I can see is, he’ll want one o’ these every time he feels old. Come t’ think of it, sir . . . I’m feelin’ a wee bit old m’self.”

  Crew members swarmed around the long tables of cake, hors d’oeuvres, and drinks, and the first trays were picked clean in no time at all. Chekov poked mournfully at a nearly microscopic piece of cake with his fork while Dr. Christine Chapel and Lieutenant Commanders Uhura and Sulu dug into wedges almost too large for their plates.

  “Mmmm,” Uhura purred. “I didn’t think the food synthesizer could make cake like this.”

  “It couldn’t,” said Christine. “Not till I changed the programming a bit.”

  Everyone laughed—except Chekov. Sulu nudged him. “What’s with you?”

  “Where’s your party face?” said Uhura.

  “I have a feeling this is his party face,” Sulu said wryly. “You know these gloomy Russians.” He slid his fork under a huge hunk of cake and dumped it on the saturnine security chief’s dish.

  Chekov promptly dropped it back onto the serving tray with a strangled cry of frustration. “It’s fattening.”

  “You’re still a growing boy,” said Uhura. “Since when are you worried about fattening foods?”

  “Since I seem to have put on an extra ten pounds.”

  “Where? On your toes?”

  Chekov shrugged in genuine dismay. “I don’t have the slightest idea. I don’t feel fat.”

  “Christine,” said Sulu, “is he really ten pounds overweight?”

  Christine nibbled her cake with a distinctly guilty countenance. “That’s what the scale said. When we get older, our metabolism changes. You put on weight more easily and it goes to different places. Let’s face it, Chekov, you’re not twenty-two anymore.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  The cheery din and clatter of the party promised to last a whole diurnal cycle. After all, McCoy had insisted that all duty shifts get a chance to observe a living relic in the flesh, even if it was a thoroughly soused relic. Kirk was on his way out to return to the bridge when the ship suddenly shuddered. It was a barely perceptible tremor that would go unnoticed by almost anyone on board—except Kirk or Scott. Both felt the surge of rapid acceleration, and they moved together to the intercom as First Officer Spock’s voice smoothly said, “Captain Kirk, to the bridge, please.”

  Kirk touched the wall switch. “Kirk here. Did somebody spirit a case of Scotch up there?”

  “Negative, sir. All duty personnel must remain sober.”

  “Then why are you shaking the ship, Spock?”

  “Aye, y’must’ve gone to warp six.”

  “Warp eight, Mr. Scott.”

  “Scotty, I’m surprised at you,” Kirk said in mock amazement.

  “I guess I’ve had too much t’ drink, sir.”

  “What’s going on. Spock?”

  There was an instant of hesitation before the Vulcan replied, and Kirk sensed this was no time for joking “Perhaps you had best report to the bridge, Captain.”

  “On my way. Kirk out.”

  The turbolift doors hissed open. Kirk stepped out onto the bridge deck. Spock swiveled in the center seat and stood.

  “We have received a Priority One signal from Star Fleet Command, Security Condition Red, ordering us to Star Base Twenty-two by seventeen hundred hours tomorrow. Warp eight is sufficient to ensure arrival by fifteen-forty-five hours. No further information on why our presence is requested so urgently, sir.”

  “Not even in code, Spock?”

  “Negative. The message simply said that you, Dr. McCoy, and I are to report to Fleet Admiral Harrington immediately upon our arrival.”

  Chapter Two

  “If this mission fails,” said Admiral Paul Harrington in his crisp British accent, “the whole of Quadrant J-221 could be in Klingon hands by next year.”

  “For my next birthday,” McCoy whispered to Kirk.

  Harrington spun on his heel. “What was that, Doctor?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  Harrington was a tall man with impeccable posture. He moved with deliberate precision as he paced on the rug, thick and green as a well-kept lawn. But the pacing was not nervous, just smooth, and poised—a reflection of the man’s perpetually active mind. He was English to the core, cut from the same cloth that had produced great seamen and officers for over a thousand years. Harrington had already carved a place in Federation annals with his unflappable handling of crises large and small—and Kirk was well aware that they faced another such critical juncture now.

  “There is no alternate source of tridenite in the region?” Spock asked.

  “None,” said Harrington, puffing on a c
urved ivory pipe.

  “Shad provides that ore for twenty or more planets,” Kirk said.

  “Can’t they get energy from something other than tridenite?” McCoy wondered.

  They could not, and Kirk knew it. Shad was one of those worlds with the mixed blessing of having something many other planets needed, wanted, and might even kill for—a virtually unlimited supply in its crust of tridenite, an energy ore far cleaner and safer than uranium or any of the other isotopes that had provided abundant though perilous power for many civilizations. Even Earth had gone through its early period of reliance on dangerous radioactive energy sources. Kirk knew his home world was dotted with caverns where nuclear wastes had been buried hundreds of years before—they’d continue emitting deadly particles for thousands of years to come.

  But Shad had been spared that. Tridenite had been tailored by nature for producing vast amounts of efficient energy, and the economies and industries of those twenty other planets were built on the assurance of an uninterrupted flow of the ore.

  Half those worlds belonged to the Federation, the others were neutral, but all lived in the shadow of the nearby Klingon Empire. Shad, however, was the linchpin, the coveted prize. Take over Shad, cut off the tridenite supply, watch a score of inhabited planets in Quadrant J-221 fall like dominoes, and sweep in to conquer a valuable flank of the United Federation of Planets. That had been the Klingon goal, and they’d pursued it patiently by igniting a civil war on Shad eighteen years earlier.

  Kirk rolled the historical details over in his mind. He knew the Shaddan situation as intimately as any officer, bureaucrat, or diplomat, for a simple reason—he’d been there at the war’s inception, in command of Star Fleet advisory detail attached to the Court of King Stevvin. . . .

  After five centuries, the Dynasty of Shad had survived longer than most. Now, suddenly, it teetered on the ragged edge of an abyss—and extinction lay ahead. The young Lieutenant Commander James T. Kirk felt it in his bones as he hurried to the palace for his regular late-morning meeting with the King. He arrived early and he paced the castle grounds under a somber, sunless sky, waiting; inside, the King tried to control another rancorous Council meeting.

  Twelve Cabinet ministers ringed the solid dark-wood table, which had been hewn from a single mighty tree by Stevvin’s ancestor, Keulane the Healer. Keulane had begun the Dynasty, and Stevvin was ready to accept that he was going to preside over its end. He banged the jewel-handled gavel on the table until its echo drowned out the dozen voices arguing at once.

  Sudden silence. Broken only by the deep sigh of a King. He leaned heavily on the table, looking no one in the eye as he spoke at last.

  “The Council cannot function this way. We must have order.” His voice was soft and raspy, speaking a plea, not a command.

  “There is no order on Shad,” said Yon, a pig-faced minister seated at the far end. “Why do you expect it here—sire?” His last word was clearly intended as a sarcastic afterthought.

  Stevvin formed a retort in his mind, but swallowed it unspoken. He dropped the gavel and started for the brass-trimmed double doors.

  “Sire.”

  This voice reached out and held him for a moment, though his back remained toward the Council. The King knew the respectful tone of First General Haim, the tall, stooped, bald-headed man who had been aide and friend since before Stevvin had ascended to the throne.

  “Sire . . . the Council can’t act without you.”

  “It can’t act with me, either. If twelve men and women responsible for this world’s government can’t overcome their differences to reach a goal—even to speak civilly to one another—then our cause is lost.”

  Shoulders slumped, Stevvin left the room.

  The Loyalist Coalition was crumbling, and while the Council quarreled petulantly, territory was being lost steadily to the despotic Mohd Alliance.

  The Alliance had learned well the lessons of treachery taught by its patron, the Klingon Empire. Its leaders salivated over the prospect of becoming guard dogs for the Empire, enslaving the free population of Shad and biting hunks out of the Federation’s flesh as the Quadrant came under their domination, planet by planet. The Klingons had seeded massive amounts of weaponry and money in the Mohd Alliance, and the crops were nearly ready for harvest.

  Lieutenant Commander Kirk found the King sitting alone in the meditation chamber, a velvet robe loose on his gaunt body. At the sound of a footfall on the carpet, Stevvin raised his eyes and smiled. This brash young officer could almost make him believe there was some hope.

  But the grim set of Kirk’s jaw told him, wordlessly, that hope was out of reach this time.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Kirk said quietly. “The Federation Council has decided it can’t spare more troops or supplies for support now. They’re afraid of trouble in the Talenic Sector, and a half dozen other places. Maybe in the near future, the resolution can be brought up again . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “These are indeed troubled times, James. Their answer is what we expected.” His face was deeply shadowed in the flickering candlelight. A gentle fragrance of incense wafted around them.

  “I tried to tell them with a little more help, we could win,” Kirk said, bitterness overflowing.

  “Not we. It’s not your battle, not your world.”

  Kirk ignored the King’s comment. “They don’t under stand how close the Mohd is to taking Shad and handing it over to the Klingons. They’ll wake up one day, and it’ll be too late. I’ve got to make them see—”

  Kirk began to pace, but the King stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder. “No. It’s about time for you and your men to leave.”

  The young officer looked into Stevvin’s tired eyes. Words came only after a long moment of hesitation. “Your Highness, I think it’s time for you to leave as well.”

  “This is my world, a world united by my ancestors. They took a hundred battling nations and molded them into one.”

  “Except the Mohd Province.”

  Stevvin nodded grimly. “And if the Covenant of Peace is to be broken by those sons of Hell, then I have to stay to see it happen. When I meet Keulane and my other fathers in the next life, I want them to know I stayed till the end.”

  Kirk’s office was high up in a drafty, dark-stone castle that had once served as a Shaddan monastery. The windows were too small and close to the vaulted ceiling to let in much light. He paced as he waited for a pot of chowder to warm up in the little infrared burner on his desk.

  In his year on Shad, Kirk had become close to the old King, and he shared the anguish that Stevvin felt now. In the days before battle losses had become daily events, they’d often spent soft summer evenings on the palace balcony, sipping fruitwine, discussing everything from poetry to history, from battle tactics to bawdy Shaddan tales. When the twin moons set in the coolness of dawn, the two men would more than likely still be out there as witnesses to the night’s end.

  Kirk was just a young line officer, commanding a force of a hundred men; Stevvin was nearing old age and ruled a planet of a hundred million people. But still they’d bridged the gap with friendship, sharing respect and affection.

  And if anything tore Kirk apart now more than his own helplessness, it was having to watch a good and gentle King see his planet weakened by a civil war he was powerless to end.

  Kirk sipped a steaming spoonful of the native sea chowder. A fresh-faced ensign entered the open door and set a dispatch cassette on the desk.

  “It’s from the mountain front, sir. It’s . . . it’s not good news.”

  Placing the tape in the viewer, Kirk scowled and watched the image of a map as a field commander’s flat voice told him what he prayed he’d never hear. The Mohd’s artillery had cut Loyalist defense lines and the enemy was advancing on the King’s capital city. There was no time waste.

  “I don’t care how you do it,” Kirk snapped. “Shake a shuttle loose and have it on the palace lawn by fifteen hundred hours. I’ll worry about
how we get it out of the capital and into space.”

  He punched the communicator panel button, shutting it off. He rubbed his eyes, stood, and headed down the monastery’s ancient stone steps. His feet automatically followed the path across the cobblestoned city square to the palace, looming over the narrow streets from its hillside perch. Kirk’s mind wandered to thoughts of the irony of Stevvin’s fate.

  After five centuries of stability, the Shaddan people, rulers included, had been bred to believe in lasting peace and security. It had become as natural to them as logic had to Vulcans. But it was false security, for under the blanket of unity and progress a sore festered deep in the heart of the Mohd Province, whose warrior people fancied themselves slighted with an unequal share of the planet’s wealth. Since ancient times, the Mohd nomads had ranged far to fight any population that accepted their challenge. To them, the peace forged by Keulane and his successor was an affliction, and they swore never to accept it.

  Klingon agents had recognized blood brothers in this province of restless warriors, and prodded them to seek out dissent elsewhere on Shad, nurture it, probe the soft underbelly of the old dynasty—and slash it with a lightning stroke of rebellion.

  Lieutenant Commander Kirk grudgingly marveled at the Klingons’ simple view of the order of things—that discord was ever-present and with the proper encouragement could be made to flare into open war. The status quo was of no use—the Empire could only gain by taking what belonged to someone else. Victory meant advance—loss only that they were back to their starting point. The Klingons truly lived by the adage Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  And their Shaddan campaign certainly represented an effective venture. The government under King Stevvin had misjudged the strength of the dark forces in the Mohd Province, unaware that massive clandestine Klingon support in weapons and supplies had created a bristling war machine. So had the Federation miscalculated, perhaps because no Klingon troops were present. Never before had the Empire flexed such power in absentia; meanwhile, other trouble spots needed tending, and Kirk knew that the Star Fleet aid he had brought was too little, too late.