by David Mack
Garth beckoned a waiter, plucked two flutes of Deltan champagne from the Bolian’s tray, and handed them to Spock and Marlena. Then he took two more for himself and Marta before shooing away the server. Raising his drink and his voice, he announced, “A toast to Starfleet’s newest flag officer! Admiral Spock, may your record be one of strength and glory!”
In near unison the crowd echoed, “Strength and glory!”
Spock bowed his head in humble recognition of the accolade as the room’s occupants sipped from their drinks in his honor.
The only VIP in the room to whom Spock and Marlena had not yet been introduced emerged from the crowd and smiled at them. “Admiral Spock, Commander Moreau,” said the well-dressed human man with distinctly Asian features. “I’m Governor Donald Cory. I apologize for missing the ceremony, but I was occupied on official business.” He offered his hand to Spock.
“No apology is necessary, Governor,” Spock said, shaking the man’s hand.
“Governor,” Marlena said, holding out her hand to Cory, who lifted it and kissed the back of it lightly.
Cory’s demeanor turned somber. “Let me also extend my condolences on the passing of Doctor McCoy. Xenopolycythemia is a terrible way to die.”
“Indeed,” Spock said. “It was unfortunate to lose such a skilled surgeon in his prime. Fortunately, Doctor M’Benga has proved an able successor.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Cory said. He nodded at Garth. “At the grand admiral’s request, I offer you both my suite for the night, as the first of your many rewards for ascending to the Admiralty.”
“Too kind, Governor,” Spock said. “We are honored to accept.”
“Excellent. The room’s prepared. You may retire at your leisure.”
“Thank you, Governor,” Spock said, adding with a nod at Garth, “Admiral.”
Spock took Marlena’s arm gently and guided her away from the duo and toward a nearby buffet table. As they crossed the room, Spock sensed Garth and Cory continuing to observe him and Marlena. As soon as they seemed to be out of earshot, Marlena whispered to Spock, “I don’t trust them.”
“Nor do I,” Spock said. “The fact Admiral Garth arranged in advance for us to reside overnight on the planet’s surface suggests he has an agenda that hinges on our continued presence.”
Picking up a clean plate and wearing an insincere smile, Marlena said, “In other words, we’re being led into a trap.”
“Precisely,” Spock said.
She grabbed a serving fork and speared a ring of pineapple from a platter of sliced fruit. “Then let’s eliminate Garth and Cory now—a preemptive strike.”
“No,” Spock said. “Our actions must be circumspect and our reactions proportional. Until the grand admiral reveals his intentions, we will bide our time.”
“So, we’re to do nothing?” Marlena asked before taking a bite of pineapple.
Casting a subtle look back at Garth and Cory, Spock replied, “Biding our time does not mean lowering our guard.” He met Marlena’s conspiratorial stare. “The next move is Garth’s. The last move will be ours.”
Standing naked in the bedroom of his private suite inside the Elba II governor’s mansion, Garth said to Marta, “It’s time.”
Using cellular-metamorphosis powers he had learned decades earlier from the Antosians, Garth changed his shape into a nearly identical likeness of Admiral Spock. Speaking with a pitch-perfect imitation of the Vulcan’s baritone, he asked his Orion concubine, “How do I look, my love?”
She ran her hands over his chest and gazed lustfully up at him. “Good enough to eat,” she said, her voice almost a growl. Pushing in a futile effort to force him onto the bed, she added, “I think I’m going to like this game.”
Garth grabbed Marta by the shoulders and shoved her aside. “This isn’t foreplay, darling. This is war.”
“Spoilsport,” she said, pouting as she sat on the bed, rebuffed and angry.
He turned and studied the fine details of his appearance in a mirror. “I spent years keeping an eye on Kirk,” he said. “I never dreamed it would be his Vulcan first officer I’d have to worry about.” Noting one of his eyebrows resting at too sharp an angle, he adjusted it with a thought. “Ever since Kirk deposed Pike, I’ve suspected he had some kind of secret weapon.” Satisfied with his appearance, he turned toward Marta. “Judging from Kirk’s service record, it was probably something he found in Doctor Adams’s house of horrors on the Tantalus colony.”
“And now you think Spock has it,” Marta said, sounding pleased with her own meager powers of deduction.
Mimicking his subject, he raised one eyebrow. “Indeed.” He picked up a communicator programmed to duplicate the signal encryption used on Spock’s device. “If I’m right, and Spock captured some kind of superweapon from Kirk, then he’s ten times more dangerous than Kirk ever was. Kirk was a thug; all he wanted was power and glory. But this Vulcan … he calls himself a reformer. Power won’t satisfy him; he won’t stop until he tears down the Empire.”
Marta replied, “So? Kill him, then.”
Garth-as-Spock smirked at his impetuous paramour. “Not until I find that weapon, my love.” He gently pinched her chin and lifted it so she would look into his eyes. “I plan to beam up to the Enterprise as Spock, search his quarters, and find that device.” Stroking her cheek, he added, “Once I have it, I’ll terminate him, his wife, and his senior officers.” He ran his fingers through Marta’s hair, which was as black as a starless night. “And then, my flower, we’ll pay a visit to Empress Sato III—and take her throne for ourselves.”
He flipped up the communicator’s grille and opened a channel. “Spock to Enterprise.”
“Scott here,” came the reply. “Go ahead, Admiral.”
“One to beam up,” Garth said.
“Aye, sir,” Commander Scott said. “Queen to queen’s level three.”
In no mood to banter, Garth snapped, “Mister Scott, I said beam me aboard.”
Unfazed, Scott answered, “I said, ‘Queen to queen’s level three.’ ”
Why was the Enterprise’s first officer being so obstinate? “We have no time for chess problems, Mister Scott. Beam me aboard.”
“I’m following your orders, Admiral. Queen to queen’s level three.”
Garth struggled to suppress his rage. Spock had somehow learned of his shape-shifting ability and taken a precaution against its being used to impersonate him on his own ship. After a brief pause, Garth said, “Very good, Mister Scott. I will contact you later. Spock out.” He flipped shut the communicator’s cover, then pounded his empty fist against the wall and let out a roar of fury as he transmuted back to his own form. At last he bellowed, “Damn that half-Vulcan bastard! I might not be able to bluff my way onto the Enterprise, but I can still order it blown to pieces!” He flipped open the communicator and reset its frequency to hail his flagship. “Garth to Imperious.”
They were the last words he ever spoke.
Before his XO could reply, a flash of light consumed him, and the last thing he heard was Marta’s terrified scream.
Marlena brushed the tip of her index finger over the teardrop-shaped trigger of the Tantalus field device a second time and put an end to Marta’s hysterical shrieking.
She returned the device to its standby mode. Its resonant hum filled her and Spock’s quarters on the Enterprise until its concealing wall panel lowered into place. Then the only sound in the compartment was the low thrumming of the ship’s impulse engines and the white noise of its ventilation system.
Her task completed, she took a communicator from her belt and flipped its cover open. “Marlena to Spock.”
“Spock here.”
“You’re clear to return.”
“Acknowledged. Stand by.”
The channel clicked off, and Marlena closed her communicator. Seconds later, the room brightened as a swirling column of light shimmered into view a few meters from where she was standing. The air rang with the musical drone
of the transporter effect as Spock materialized. As soon as the last sparkles faded from his person, he stepped toward Marlena. “Well done,” he said.
He passed her and walked into their bedroom. She followed him. “How did you know about Garth’s ability?”
“It was one of many secrets I found in Captain Kirk’s logs after I killed him,” Spock explained, removing the tunic of his dress uniform. “He had been researching Garth’s history on Antos IV as a prelude to moving against him. Though I had not been able to confirm the grand admiral’s shape-changing ability prior to this visit, it seemed prudent to safeguard against it.”
Flush with adrenaline from the kill, Marlena pressed herself against Spock’s back. “A wise decision, my love. Now that he’s gone, the fleet can answer to you as its grand admiral.”
Spock stepped away from her and turned about. “No,” he said.
Marlena’s brow creased with anger and confusion. “Why not?”
“It is too soon,” Spock said. “I have been an admiral for less than five hours. If I lay claim to that title now, I will earn the contempt of every flag officer in Starfleet. Furthermore, the rank of grand admiral is bestowed only by imperial decree. If the Empress denies my claim to advancement, my own crew will be obligated to execute me for treason.”
Slumping onto the bed, Marlena felt a tide of disappointment wash over her. “In other words, you’ll never become grand admiral.” Her remark drew a hard look from Spock. Feeling as if she needed to explain herself, she added, “You know the Empress will never permit it.”
“Yes, she will,” Spock said. “Because when the time comes for me to take control of Starfleet, I will make certain she has no other choice.”
7
A Lamb to Slaughter
Dr. Carol Marcus had just spoken truth to power, and she expected to regret it.
Hidden within Starbase 47—also known as Vanguard—was a top-secret laboratory known as the Vault. The high-security facility had been designed as a repository for secrets Starfleet had unearthed in the Taurus Reach, but to Marcus it felt more like a prison. She and more than two dozen of the Terran Empire’s greatest scientific minds, military and civilian alike, had been shanghaied into service a few years earlier aboard the enormous station, which was situated hundreds of light-years from Earth in a hotly contested sector of space. Her team members were the Empire’s experts in a range of disciplines, but they shared one mission: Unlock the secrets of the Shedai, a precursor race that once had reigned supreme over a vast interstellar civilization in this region of the galaxy.
The process had started with a string of alien genetic information that had come to be known as the Taurus Meta-Genome. Later, Starfleet discovered a signal pulse they called the Shedai Carrier Wave and an energy wave known as the Jinoteur Pattern. All these breakthroughs were related to artifacts known as Conduits, which had been found on dozens of worlds across the sector.
It was a tantalizing mystery, but Carol Marcus was tired of it.
Defying orders, the advice of her peers, and her own better judgment, she had decided enough was enough. For spite’s sake as much as for principle, she would not—could not—bring herself to continue applying her knowledge and insight to advance Starfleet’s belligerent agenda and serve the barbaric whims of Vanguard’s commanding officer. And she had said so. To the commodore.
That, she suspected in hindsight, had probably been a mistake.
The lab’s secure inner door opened, and Commodore Diego “Red” Reyes stormed in. His fists and jaw were clenched, and dark veins throbbed on his shorn head. The garish collection of awards and insignia decorating his tunic jangled as he stomped across the Vault’s open main compartment, and a long-barreled energy weapon bounced against his hip. He reached Marcus and bellowed, “Who the hell do you think you are?” She turned her head because looking at his right eye—a red-lensed, polished-steel cybernetic replacement—unnerved her.
Before she could reply, Reyes continued his harangue. “You think because you’re the chief egghead down here, that gives you the authority to refuse my orders? I thought you were a genius, Doctor Marcus, but if you can’t tell the difference between an empty title and real authority, you must be an idiot savant.” Reyes looked past Marcus and saw the Vault’s team of scientists trying to slink away. “All of you, get back here,” he snapped. The others did as he commanded.
Turning back to Marcus, Reyes jabbed his finger at her face. “I’m a busy man, Doctor. I can’t have you shutting down my research division when there’s work to be done.”
“The reason I halted—”
“I don’t care what your reason was,” Reyes cut in.
“You should,” Marcus said, her voice sharp and her gaze unyielding. “You’ve got us playing with fire, and we don’t have enough safeguards.”
Recoiling as if in disbelief, Reyes said, “That’s what this is about? You shut down the most important classified laboratory in Starfleet because you’re scared?”
“It’s bigger than that,” Marcus said. “The entity your people captured on Mirdonyae V is too powerful to be contained inside that experiment chamber. We need to think about how to dispose of it before it gets out.”
Reyes stepped forward and backed Marcus against the circular, transparent-steel wall that encased the Vault’s central experiment chamber. Behind her swirled an ever-changing mass of dark vapors and fluids—Vanguard’s prisoner, the Shedai that called itself the Wanderer. “Dispose of it?” echoed Reyes. “Are you out of your goddamned mind, Doctor? That thing is the key to the Empire’s future control of this sector, and maybe even the galaxy. We can use it to unlock every piece of Shedai technology in the Taurus Reach and bring the Klingons and Tholians to their knees—and you want to get rid of it?”
“We have to,” Marcus said. “The longer we hold it, the higher the risk of its escape. And if it ever gets out of that chamber, it’ll kill us all.”
The commodore’s smile was thin and humorless. “Then you’d better make damned sure it never gets out.”
“You’re not listening! You’re courting disaster keeping that thing here!”
Locking one beefy hand around Marcus’s throat, Reyes replied, “No, Doctor, you’re the one courting disaster—by not following my orders.” He closed his grip just tightly enough to restrict Marcus’s breathing but not enough to stop it. “You don’t seem to appreciate the big picture here, so permit me to explain it to you. We’re in an arms race with the Klingons, the Tholians, and the Romulans. I don’t have the luxury of playing it safe or catering to the fears of weak-kneed eggheads like you. The Empress gave me three things when she posted me here: a clearly defined mission, a deadline, and absolute authority in the Taurus Reach. Time is a factor, Doctor. I need results now, and I need you to deliver them.”
Struggling for air, Marcus remained defiant. “I can’t deliver anything if I’m dead,” she said in a choked-off rasp. “And neither can you.”
Reyes nodded. “I see. You need more encouragement. I figured you would.” He released her throat, grabbed the lapel of her lab coat, and dragged her away from the experiment chamber to a nearby computer terminal. He jabbed at the console’s keys and opened a channel. “Reyes to ops.”
“Cooper here,” answered the station’s dark-haired executive officer as he appeared on-screen. “Go ahead, sir.”
“Patch the feed from the brig to my screen, Commander.”
“Aye, sir.”
The image on the screen wavered and shifted to reveal an agony booth in Vanguard’s brig. Locked inside was Marcus’s eight-year-old son, David. The tow-headed boy was screaming to be set free, his palms pressed plaintively against the torture device’s transparent-aluminum walls.
Marcus felt her stomach churn with fear. She wanted to lunge at Reyes and shout curses at the top of her lungs, but she felt paralyzed, as if she were made of stone and cemented to the floor.
“This is why you’re going back to work,” Reyes said. “One word fro
m me and your son will experience more pain than anyone else in history.” Jabbing his finger in Marcus’s face, he added, “One more word out of you, and that’s how he’s going to die.”
8
The Weight of Promises
Carol Marcus collapsed on top of Clark Terrell and relaxed into his thickly muscled brown arms. “Thank you,” she said, aglow with postcoital perspiration.
“That’s my line,” he said, chortling softly and stroking her blond hair.
“I needed to get off the station for an hour,” Marcus said. “I’m just glad your ship’s in port for resupply.”