The Bloodwing Voyages

by Diane Duane

  “Permission to come aboard,” the commander said.

  “Permission granted.” Jim stepped around from behind the transporter console, Spock pacing him. “And welcome.”

  She stood there quite relaxed, looking Jim up and down, then favoring Spock with the same calm, unthreatening examination. Jim used the moment to continue his own. “They’ve changed the uniform,” he said.

  The commander glanced down at her tunic and breeches and boots, then smiled; a wry expression. “It was well changed,” she said. “The kilt on the old uniform was a drafty bit of tailoring, and difficult to work in.” She stepped down from the transporter platform, looking around her with curiosity. “Is my translator functioning adequately?” she said. “It was a hasty business, reprogramming it for Federation Basic.”

  “So far it seems to be doing well enough,” Jim said. “If you like, though, Dr. McCoy here will help equip you with one of our intradermal models.”

  “I would appreciate that,” said the commander. “We have talking to do, and there must be no chance of imprecision or error; too much rests on it.”

  She looked at Jim with such perfect ease that for a moment he was envious. Would I be so calm after I had delivered myself into the hands of the enemy? What cards is she holding? “So here at last,” she said, “is my old friend Captain Kiurrk.” Doubtless some flicker of reaction got out despite Jim’s best intentions, for she smiled again. “Perhaps I will just call you ‘Captain’; for it does not do to mishandle names.” She turned to Spock. “Yours, though, I think I can say, estranged though our languages are. And yours,” she said, glancing toward Bones, “might almost be Romulan. But ‘Doctor’ is an honorable title, so if I may, I will call you that. Gentlemen, may we go where we can talk? Handsome as this room is, it hardly looks like a reception area.”

  “This way,” Jim said, and led the group out and down the hall to the officers’ lounge. He bowed the commander in; and the first thing she responded to was not the elegant appointments, or the artwork, or the refreshments laid out, but the large port that looked out on the stars. That starlight was wavering, the uncomfortable starlight of unfiltered otherspace. Nevertheless she looked long and hard at it before she turned away. “The view must be marvelous,” she said, “when the ship is not in warp.”

  “It is,” Jim said. “Commander, will you sit?”

  “Gladly.” Without a moment’s hesitation she slipped past the two couches set by the low refreshment table, and sat down in the single chair that faced them both, the chair commanding both the best view of the couches’ occupants and the best access to the table—the chair Jim had intended to sit in. He smiled, said nothing, and made himself comfortable on one couch; but McCoy, fishing around in his medikit for a translator implant and the spray injector to fit it into, caught Jim’s eye and raised one eyebrow before turning his attention back to business.

  “Commander,” Jim said, “what can we do for you?”

  “For the moment, listen,” said the commander. “More strenuous service may come later, however, if you agree with what I have to say. First, though, I have given you no name. I am Ael.”

  Spock, who had seated himself beside Jim, looked momentarily startled, and immediately composed himself. “Your first officer understands, perhaps better than most, that we are chary about giving others even our first names, even when they are already known,” Ael said. “And there are other names more private yet. But I can think of no other way to demonstrate my sincerity to you from the start, since many of the things I must now say to you will sound incredible. I urge you, study to credit them. The whole Romulan Empire, and the Federation, and the Klingon Empire as well, rests on how seriously you take me.”

  “Tell us your problem, madam,” Spock said.

  “It will not be simply told.” Seeing that McCoy was ready, Ael held out her arm to him; he took it, picked a spot on the inside of the forearm, and used the spray injector to install the translator’s neutral implant up against the brachial nerve. “How is that? All right?—Well enough. Captain, have you ever heard of a place called Levaeri V?”

  Jim considered for a moment. “Levaeri is a star in Romulan space, if I remember right. I would assume the ‘V’ refers to a planet.”

  “It does. Actually, the planet itself is uninhabited; a space station, built for research purposes, circles it. The Empire has been doing research there for some fifteen years into the nature and exploitation of genetic material, particularly the building-block molecule that governs and transmits life, along with its various messenger segments.”

  “DNA and RNA,” said McCoy.

  “Correct. The research has been secret, for reasons you will come to understand. But it is very nearly complete now. If the fruit of that research is allowed to escape into our civilization, it will destroy it—and eventually yours. The research has specifically involved the genetic material of Vulcans.”

  Spock sat up very straight. Jim glanced sideways at him—knowing that putting-it-all-together look from long experience—but for the moment said nothing but, “Toward what purpose?”

  “The scientists at Levaeri V have been correcting Vulcan DNA and messenger RNA for the genetic drift that has occurred over the years between Romulan and Vulcan genetic material—so that the drift-corrected material can be used to give Romulans the paramental abilities of trained Vulcans.”

  “My God,” Bones said softly.

  Jim sat there wondering if he had missed something. Certainly it sounded dire…. “Bones, explain.”

  McCoy looked as though he would rather have done anything else. “Jim, this research—if I’m understanding Ael correctly—had its earliest antecedents on Earth in some very primitive mind experiments concerning planaria. Flatworms, as they’re called. If you teach a flatworm something—takes awhile, I can tell you—and then chop it up and feed it to other flatworms, the worms that ate the first one will learn the same trick the first worm learned, but much more quickly than normal. This is a terrible oversimplification, but RNA and DNA can be passed from one creature to another by numerous means, even simple ingestion. It caused a lot of poor jokes for a while about how ‘you are what you eat.’ But some of our own chemical-learning techniques that we commonly use in Starfleet for speed learning are based in the same technology, considerably updated and refined.”

  “We understand one another,” Ael said. She looked somewhat relieved, but also unnerved, as if actually discussing the subject in public frightened her. “The process I speak of is even more refined than the chemical-learning techniques, which we also possess—”

  “Stolen from us, I believe,” Jim said mildly.

  Ael gave him a sharp look, then smiled, that wry expression again. “Yes, we are always stealing things from one another, are we not? I would like to come back to that later, Captain. But for the moment let me say that the scientists have refined the techniques to dangerous levels. Some bright creature—the Elements should only have taken him back to Themselves—got the idea that, since we are brother stock to the Vulcans, surely they could teach us what they know of the arts and disciplines of the mind, to our great benefit—”

  “Madam,” Spock said, leaning forward and looking at Ael with great intensity, “those techniques of the mind were not developed until long after the Vulcan colony ships bearing your remote ancestors had left. In the warlike state of the pre-Reformation civilization, before the Peace of Surak, the techniques could never have been developed at all. And the Romulan civilization as we know it preserves to this day almost exactly the same combative atmosphere as existed on Vulcan before the Reformation—unless you can give us some better news.”

  “If I could, Mr. Spock,” Ael said, laughing with a trace of bitterness, “I would not have had to blow up my old ship to keep word of my actions from getting back into the Empire. I would not have been exiled to the Neutral Zone at all. Perhaps there would be no Zone. But those are all wishes, and I am wandering from my story. The researchers at Levaer
i determined that such abilities, the mind-techniques such as mindmeld and mindfusion and touch telepathy, and such lesser physical techniques as the healing trance and controlled ‘hysterical strength,’ could in fact be successfully passed on to the nontalented, and quite simply—by a procedure involving, among other things, selective neutral-tissue grafts to the corpus callosum and spinal cord, and a series of injections of the DNA and RNA fragments into the cerebrospinal fluid.”

  “It could be done,” McCoy said, looking rather upset. “Certainly it could. But you would need—”

  “Donor tissue, yes,” Ael said. “Brain tissue, both ‘white’ and ‘gray,’ and cerebrospinal fluid cultures, from mentally talented Vulcans. A great deal of it, at first, until cultures had been perfected that were sufficiently innocuous not to be rejected outright by the recipient’s autoimmune system. Naturally the researchers at Levaeri could not simply take ship across the Zone to Vulcan and ask for some good-quality live Vulcan brain tissue; any more than the Vulcans would have given it to them for any reason whatsoever. So the researchers began—borrowing—Vulcans.”

  Spock looked at Jim. “Captain,” he said, “this is the reason why I asked the Federation Intersellar Shipping Commission for the data on all recent ship losses. My preliminary studies were showing an odd jump in the curve—a nearly statistical probability that spacefaring Vulcans were going missing more frequently than were travelers of other species. I had hoped very much that I was wrong—”

  “But you were not,” Ael said. “Romulans were taking them, Mr. Spock. They were taken to Levaeri V—as many Vulcans as the researchers thought could be kidnapped without anyone really noticing—and there they were used as experimental subjects and tissue donors.”

  Jim looked across at McCoy, who was practically trembling with rage. “This is monstrous, Commander,” he said, controlling himself very tightly.

  “Certainly it is, Doctor,” she said. “What honor is there in taking one’s enemies by stealth, giving them no chance to fight back, and then binding and torturing and slaughtering them like animals? But there’s worse to come. Surely you must realize the purpose of the research. The Empire’s High Command greatly desires the Vulcan mind-techniques for a weapon against its enemies—against you, and eventually against the Klingons, who are swiftly becoming a garment too tight for us. And the High Command has been an unscrupulous lot for some time now. The Command, and the Praetorate and Senate, will demand to be the first to use the newly developed techniques. The implementation would not take long, I understand; a clinic-type surgery, followed by several injections and a very brief period of training. Then—Can you imagine, just by way of example, the kind of place Vulcan would be if its people at large, and its rulers in particular, had never developed the logics of peace and ethical behavior that Surak brought—and had the mind techniques anyway?”

  Spock looked more grave than Jim had seen him in a long time. Evidently the thought had occurred to him at one time or another. “A culture of ruthless opportunists,” he said, “violating one another’s minds for gain, or for power, or even for the mere pleasure of the act. Turmoil among the great as they struggle for preeminence and domination, trying to keep the techniques for themselves. Rebellion among those who do not have the techniques, and desire to, at any cost. War…”

  “Worse than war,” Ael said. “A world in which no thought that did not agree with the present political ‘gospel’ would be safe—where a chance whim, a moment’s disaffection, could mean death at the hands of those who were listening to your thoughts. A world in which honor and trust would swiftly become devalued coinage, and personal integrity a death warrant, if it crossed the desires of those who controlled the technique, those in power. The process has already started. Right now on Romulus and Remus there is already considerable political infighting going on over who will first get the technique when it becomes available. Who will first read all the others’ minds? Who will first learn his enemies’ secrets? And of course there are people who must be prevented at all costs from learning one’s own secret business. A lively trade in assassination is springing up.” Ael said the word as if it tasted bad. “We have already lost four Senators to the ambition or fear of people in high places.”

  Jim nodded slowly, now fully understanding those deaths by “natural causes.”

  Ael sat silent for a moment, as if gathering her thoughts. “Gentlemen,” Ael said, “I will be open with you. I am a warrior, and I find peace very dull. But honor I cherish; and I see, with the completion and release of this technique, the rise of a new Romulan Empire that will have lost the last vestiges of the glory and honor of the old one. I have sworn oaths to that Empire, to serve it loyally. To stand by and do nothing about the destruction of the ancient and noble tradition on which that Empire is based, is to put the knife into it oneself. I will not. The research station at Levaeri V must be destroyed before the information and materials stored there can be disseminated throughout the Empire.”

  Jim and Spock and McCoy looked at one another. It was now very plain what Starfleet’s problem had been—for there was no hinting at this situation in the open. If the Klingons heard so much as a word about it, they would be at war with the Romulans instantly, trying to get their hands on the same technology. It might not work as well for them, but that would hardly matter; once they had subordinated Romulan space, which was the buffer between them and the Federation, the next step would be to cross the former Neutral Zone and attack the only remaining enemy. And—the thought sent a cold chill down Jim’s back—how many officials in the Federation, on any one of a thousand planets, would be willing to pay any price for such an advantage over their opponents? Even benevolent motives couldn’t be trusted. They might start out that way, but they wouldn’t stay there. Any power of this magnitude corrupts absolutely….

  “Commander,” Jim said slowly, “this is information we’ve come a long way to hear. And we thank you very much for warning us of this danger. But there’s something I don’t understand. Why are you telling us this? I can’t be said to know you well; we’ve only just met. But I’ve fought you often enough to know that you never do anything without a good reason.”

  Ael looked at him tranquilly for a moment, and again, very briefly, Jim had a flash of combined admiration and envy of her composure. She then tipped her head back to look around the room. “Captain,” she said, “do you have any idea how many times I’ve dreamt of blowing this ship up?”

  It seemed a moment for honesty. “Probably about as many times as I’ve dreamed about blowing up yours.” That sounded a little bald, and Jim added, “Of course, it would have been a great pity….”

  “Yes,” she said absently, “it would have been a shame to blow up Enterprise, too. The workmanship appears excellent.” She flashed a smile at him: Jim became aware that he was being teased. “Captain, I come to you because I see my world in danger—and incidentally yours—and there’s no more help to be found among my friends. At such a time, with millions and billions of lives riding on what is done, pride dies, and one has recourse to one’s enemies. Of all my enemies I esteem you highest; you are a fierce combatant, but you’ve never been less than courteous with me—valorous in the best sense of the word, a warrior who deals in hard knocks or careful courtesy, nothing in between. Excluding, for the moment, various small subterfuges and thefts in the past.” Now she did not smile; this was not teasing. “I too have been ordered in the past to do things I found hateful, so I understand the necessity of what you once did to my sister’s-daughter—”

  “The other Romulan commander—she’s your niece?” McCoy said.

  “Was,” said Ael. “I agree that sooner or later we shall have to deal with that old business, Captain. But right now there is new business far more pressing. Levaeri V must be destroyed!”

  “I agree,” Jim said. “But if preventing war is one of your aims, Commander, then we have a problem. While I am willing to overlook the presence of your ship on this side of the
Zone, your High Command would never overlook that of Enterprise in Romulan space. I suspect you want Enterprise to come in and assist you in the destruction of this base, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But our crossing the Zone would be a breach of the Federation-Romulan Treaty, and an act of war.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Ael,” McCoy said, “we’re unmistakably a Federation craft. There’s no disguising the Enterprise as a Romulan warbird, no matter what you suggest we do to our ID! How do you propose to get us into Romulan space without getting us discovered and shot at?”

  She leaned back in her chair and favored them, one after another, with a look that Jim could only call mischievous. “I was thinking of capturing the Enterprise,” she said to Jim. “Would you mind?…”

  Chapter Eight

  Jim looked quietly at Ael. “If that was a joke,” he said, “it was a poor one. And if this is a trap of some kind, good workmanship or not, I am going to reduce Bloodwing to its component atoms—or die trying.”