by David Mack
Saavik threw a pointed stare at her XO. “And if the Klingons are under cloak beside the Kobayashi Maru, lying in ambush?”
The Tellarite turned toward the Caitian cadet. “Is there any sign of Klingon vessels in the area, Lieutenant?”
Checking her sensor display, the Caitian replied, “No, sir.”
Her answer seemed to puff up the Tellarite with smug satisfaction.
Saavik turned her chair to face the science station. “Lieutenant, scan for unusual tachyon-dispersal patterns in the vicinity of the Kobayashi Maru, and then scan for evidence its inertial drift is being affected by microgravity effects.”
“Aye, Captain,” said the Caitian, turning to her work.
The bridge was quiet for several seconds while the Caitian conducted her laborious scans and analysis. Every passing moment seemed to make the Tellarite XO angrier. “We’re wasting time!” he protested to Saavik. “We should recover that ship before the Klingons do come by to investigate!”
“Patience, Mister Glar,” Saavik said, cool and unhurried.
The Caitian looked up from the sensor hood. “Captain, there are elevated tachyon levels in close proximity to the Kobayashi Maru. Interaction patterns suggest three discrete sources for those particles.”
Saavik nodded. “And do you detect evidence of microgravity effects on the Kobayashi Maru, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. I do. My readings suggest it’s being acted upon by at least three objects, each with a mass of just less than one million gross tons.”
Casting an accusatory stare at her XO, Saavik asked, “Do you still advocate crossing the Neutral Zone, Mister Glar?” The Tellarite had no reply. Saavik faced forward and issued orders with icy detachment. “Arm photon torpedoes, full spread. Lock them onto the Kobayashi Maru.” Her helmsman threw a questioning look over his shoulder, prompting Saavik to add sternly, “That is an order.”
The Andorian turned his focus back toward his console and carried out Saavik’s commands. “Torpedoes armed and locked, Captain.”
“Fire,” Saavik said.
A muffled screech of magnetic launchers reverberated through the deck and bulkheads, and a cluster of blue projectiles raced away on the simulator’s main viewscreen before vanishing into warp speed. A few seconds passed. Then, even as the bridge’s screen showed nothing but a placid vista of stars, the Caitian at the sensor console reported, “The Kobayashi Maru has been destroyed, Captain.”
“Secure from Red Alert,” Saavik said. “Resume original heading. And, Mister ch’Lerras?” The Andorian helmsman looked back at Saavik as she added, “The next time you hesitate to carry out one of my orders, you will be disciplined. Is that clear?”
“Aye, Captain,” said the Andorian.
“Good. Carry on.”
In the control room with Spock, Captain Johan Spreter, the senior instructor, entered the test’s results into the computer and declared, “All right, open it up.” His staff of technicians, programmers, and engineers shut down the simulator. Inside the model bridge, bright overhead lights snapped on, and the bulkhead separating it from the control room began to retract. The cadets got up from their posts and started moving toward an exit to an amphitheater-style lecture hall.
Spreter, a wiry middle-aged man with white hair and green eyes, gestured at Saavik and asked Spock, “Want to talk to her before the debriefing?”
Not yet ready to put his disappointment into words, Spock replied, “No.”
He turned and left the control room, wondering whether his trust in Saavik might have been misplaced, after all.
Less than a day after her graduation from Starfleet Academy, Saavik stepped off a transporter pad aboard the I.S.S. Enterprise. Admiral Spock stood before her, hands folded behind his back. “Welcome aboard, Ensign,” he said.
“Thank you, Admiral.” She reached back toward the pad for her duffel.
“Leave it,” Spock said. “A yeoman will bring it to your quarters directly.” He stepped toward the door, which hissed open ahead of him, and paused at its threshold. Looking back, he said, “Walk with me, Ensign.”
“Yes, sir,” Saavik said, falling in behind him.
She followed Spock through the bustling corridors of his flagship. The crew was occupied with the tasks that preceded a departure after a port call. A steady undercurrent of comm chatter filtered out of open doorways and mingled with the crackle and sizzle of engineers working with plasma cutters and ion welders, which tainted the ship’s normally scent-free atmosphere with a hint of ozone.
Saavik was careful to linger just a fraction of a step behind Spock’s left shoulder, rather than presume to stride beside him as if she were his equal.
In a low voice, Spock said, “Speaking as your mentor, I find myself troubled by your solution to the Kobayashi Maru.”
Perplexed, Saavik asked, “With what part of my performance do you find fault, Admiral?”
Spock withheld his answer as a group of enlisted personnel passed them. He led her inside a waiting turbolift. “Deck Fifteen, Section Bravo,” he said to the computer as the doors shut. Then he turned to face Saavik. “I question your decision to resolve the scenario by destroying the Kobayashi Maru.”
His criticism surprised her. “I do not understand,” she said. “My solution to the test was entirely logical.”
“By what line of reasoning?”
She mentally composed her answer as the turbolift car raced vertically and then laterally through the Enterprise’s primary hull. “The freighter was outside Terran space but not yet inside Klingon space. However, it was in an area where travel is prohibited by interstellar treaty.
“If its crew navigated into the Neutral Zone on purpose, then they were guilty of a criminal violation of interstellar law that risked the security of the Terran Empire as a whole, and as such were subject to summary execution.”
The turbolift stopped, and its doors opened. She continued her answer as she and Spock exited the lift and walked through a gently curving corridor.
“If the vessel’s distress call had been forged by the Klingons to lure us into a trap and provide them a rationale for breaking the treaty—which I believe was the case—then its crew was engaged in an act of war for the Klingon Defense Forces while operating under false colors. Under the terms of interstellar law, they were therefore subject to preemptive attack.”
Spock nodded, as if he were giving serious consideration to the merits of her argument. Then he asked, “Did you at any time consider the possibility that the crew of the Kobayashi Maru might themselves have been lured off course by the Klingons? Or that perhaps their ship did suffer a navigational malfunction that led them off course before rendering them unable to maneuver at warp?”
“I deemed such considerations irrelevant,” Saavik replied.
There was a note of suspicion in Spock’s voice as he asked, “Why?”
They arrived at the door of Saavik’s quarters. She stopped and turned to face her mentor. “In either of the situations you propose, the Kobayashi Maru would have been co-opted by the Klingons as a tactical asset. By destroying it, we deprive them of that asset without risking an escalation of hostilities, because the Klingons have no claim to jurisdiction over Terran vessels or citizens. Furthermore, because the incident transpired inside the Neutral Zone, the Klingons would be unable to protest any collateral damage that might have been inflicted on their cloaked ships, since the Treaty of Organia expressly bans them from operating there.”
“Essentially true,” Spock said. “But what of the crew of the Kobayashi Maru? Were they still alive, would they have deserved to be rescued?”
“Irrelevant,” Saavik said. She unlocked the door of her quarters. It slid open. She stepped into the doorway to hold it open while she finished her conversation with Spock. “The rescue of civilians is not a declared function of Starfleet.”
“What if it was?” Spock asked. “Let me pose a new tactical scenario: What if you not only were required by Starfleet regulation
s to try to defend the lives of the Kobayashi Maru’s civilian crew but in fact had been expressly ordered by a superior officer to mount a rescue operation of the vessel and its personnel?”
It was an outrageous proposition. “Given the same tactical parameters?”
“Yes.”
Saavik pondered the tactical disaster that would unfold if she were to lead a lone starship into hostile action against three Klingon heavy cruisers. She shook her head. “I am sorry, Admiral,” she said. “Such a scenario would have no viable strategy for victory.”
“Correct,” Spock said. “That is the circumstance upon which I want you to reflect as you contemplate your future as a Starfleet officer.”
22
Falls the Shadow
Carol Marcus awoke to a hand clamping over her mouth and nose.
“Not a word,” a male voice commanded her. “Shut up and don’t fight.”
She was pulled from her bed dressed only in her nightclothes. Two men in Starfleet security uniforms dragged her kicking and flailing through the main room of her quarters. Another pair of security officers had gagged her son, who struggled futilely in their grasp as they carried him out behind his mother.
They were hauled quickly through Vanguard’s corridors, which were strangely deserted. Can’t have anyone see our last moments, Marcus thought bitterly. No point disappearing us if anyone sees what really happened.
The turbolift ride seemed longer than usual. Must be the adrenaline, Marcus reasoned, trying to calm her thoughts. Every little moment was being stretched by her fear.
Finally, they arrived at what seemed to be a terminal destination: an airlock on one of the station’s lowest levels. Marcus and her son were pushed inside the airlock chamber, where the rest of her staff from the Vault was already corralled. Two of her colleagues helped her and David stand up.
Standing in the doorway of the airlock’s open inner hatch was one of Reyes’s top command officers, Lieutenant Ming Xiong. Though he called himself a scientist, his true role aboard Vanguard had been to serve as Reyes’s watchdog in the Vault. For most of the last decade, he had haunted Marcus’s every movement in the lab, and he had documented the team’s every discovery in painstaking detail for the commodore.
Hulking security-division goons stood on either side of Xiong, their phasers leveled at the civilian researchers they had herded into the airlock.
Xiong smirked. “Doctor Marcus, I’d like to thank you and your team for coming on such short notice.”
“Go to hell,” Marcus replied, determined to die with some pride.
Addressing the group, Xiong continued. “You’ve all done remarkable work, and Commodore Reyes wants you to know how grateful he is for your efforts. However, now that he has what he needs from you—the greatest weapon in the history of the Terran Empire—he no longer requires your services. You are, as the expression goes, ‘loose ends,’ and the commodore wants you tied off.”
Marcus had always known this day would come. She just hadn’t expected it to arrive so soon. She grabbed her son and pulled him to her side.
Xiong pressed a button on a control pad beside the airlock. The inner door closed with a heavy thud. Then came a soft crackle as he activated the intercom between the airlock and the corridor. Turning to the security guards, Xiong said, “Gentlemen, for the sake of plausible deniability, it would be best if none of you sees what happens next.” When none of the guards took the hint, he added in a more forceful tone, “Dismissed.”
The security squad walked away. Xiong watched them leave. Then he began entering commands into the airlock’s control pad. Looking through the door’s hexagonal window of transparent aluminum, he said, “Doctor Marcus, I need you and your team to listen to me carefully. We don’t have much time.”
“Excuse me?”
“Pay attention,” he snapped. “In a few moments, I’m going to open the outer door, but I’m not ejecting you folks into space. You won’t be able to see it, but there’s going to be a ship docked on the other side.”
Confused looks passed between Marcus and the other scientists. “What are you talking about, Xiong? What’s going on?”
“You’re being extracted,” he said. “Rescued by Starfleet Intelligence, on orders from Admiral Spock. I need to bypass the sensors on this airlock so it’ll look to the ops center like I’ve spaced you.”
Putting on a display of bravado, David asked accusatorily, “How can a ship dock here without the station’s crew knowing it?”
“It’ll be cloaked,” Xiong said.
As if on cue, there was a gentle thump against the airlock’s exterior bulkhead. Next came the sound of magnetic clamps being secured, and a hiss of atmosphere flooding into a hard-seal passageway.
The light above the outer door changed from red to green, but Marcus still saw nothing but space and stars through its viewport.
“Remember to lay low,” Xiong said. Checking his chrono, he added, “Because as of oh-three nineteen, you’re all officially dead.” He smiled. “Good luck.” Then, with the press of a button, he opened the outer door.
Instead of the cold pull of vacuum, Marcus felt a gust of warm, dry air. Out of the darkness, rippling into view like a mirage, was a narrow passageway to another airlock, one with a decidedly non-Starfleet design. Standing in the far airlock was a young male Edoan in a Starfleet uniform, waving Marcus and the others forward. “Come on,” he said. “Hurry! We can’t stay more than a minute!”
Pushing her son ahead of her, Marcus led her research team onto the cloaked vessel, where more Starfleet personnel met them and shepherded them down dim corridors whose surfaces had a green cast. As soon as the last of her people was aboard the cloaked ship, she heard the airlock doors thud closed, followed by the clang of the magnetic clamps releasing. Then she felt the low vibration of impulse engines kicking in, and she realized in utter surprise that she was finally free of Commodore Reyes and his station of horrors.
Her son squeezed her hand and asked, “Mom? Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” she said, seeing no point in lying. “But wherever we end up, we’re going to owe Admiral Spock a very large debt of gratitude.”
Six weeks, two days, and eleven hours after its last port call on Vulcan, Enterprise was following an elliptical patrol route that kept it in close proximity to most of the Empire’s core systems.
Despite a number of requests by Spock to have Enterprise assigned to deep-space exploration, Starfleet Command insisted on keeping the vessel near the heart of the Terran Empire. The curtness with which Spock’s entreaties had been rebuffed led him to suspect the hand of Empress Sato III was behind Enterprise’s currently less than glamorous mission profile.
He glanced at the warp-distorted starlight on the bridge’s viewscreen, and then looked around to observe his crew at work. The Enterprise’s bridge had seemed darker to him since its 2271 refit—its curves more pronounced, its shadows deeper. Overall, the more somber ambience suited Spock, who had found its previous incarnations garishly bright. Another definite improvement of the refit was that the chairs had been securely fastened to the deck and equipped with optional safety braces. Though little more than a half measure in a pitched battle, they nonetheless represented progress.
Returning his attention to the day’s reports, he was pleased to note that according to several metrics used for evaluating the performance of his ship and its crew, efficiency had improved across the board by a significant degree in the years since he had abolished the use of agonizers. He had expected the gains to level off over time; instead, his crew continued to excel. Deck officers’ logs also indicated a steadily higher level of crew morale.
“Admiral,” said Lieutenant Palmer, interrupting Spock’s ruminations, “you have an incoming transmission on a coded subspace frequency.”
“I will take it in my quarters,” Spock said, rising from his chair. He nodded at his first officer across the deck. “Mister Decker, you have the conn.”
&nb
sp; Spock stepped out of a turbolift near his quarters. He walked quickly, clearing his thoughts. As soon as he was inside his cabin he locked the door behind him and crossed the compartment to his desk. On-screen was the emblem of the Empire.
He keyed in a command to initiate playback of the coded message. A masculine computer voice replied, “State your name, rank, and command code for voiceprint verification.”
“Spock, Admiral, command code four-nine-kilo-seven-one-sierra-blue.”
“Command code and voiceprint verified.”
The imperial emblem was replaced by the face of T’Prynn. “Greetings, Admiral,” she said. “Operation Vanguard has been terminated.”