by David Stern
“Proof of the facility’s existence.”
“And purpose.”
“You have any thoughts on how to go about getting that proof?”
“Commander Tuval’s initial site survey lacked specificity,” Spock said. “I had intended members of my department to conduct a more thorough search of the area.”
“Return to the asteroid’s surface? That might be difficult to arrange.”
“Perhaps.” He thought a moment. “I could generate orders from Starfleet Command, requesting such a survey.”
“Generate fake orders?”
“It should be possible,” he said. “I do have an A-seven rating.”
“So I heard.” The trace of a smile flitted across her face and disappeared just as quickly. “If we get caught …”
“You are A-six—the next-highest rating aboard the ship.”
“Vlasidovich is A-five,” Number One pointed out.
“I was not aware of that,” Spock said. A5 was expert level as well. Another impressive accomplishment to add to Vlasidovich’s list. Still, working together, the two of them—the commander and himself—should be more than capable of keeping their activities hidden from the captain.
The comm sounded, the telltale chime of someone at her door. Number One looked at Spock, who nodded.
“Enter!” she called out.
Captain Vlasidovich walked into the room.
“As I suspected.” The captain put his hands on his hips and glared. “I find the two of you here. Together.”
Spock had heard the expression “My heart leaped into my mouth” many times in the years since he had entered Starfleet. Read it, actually, to be more precise, in his review of human literature. He knew what it meant, of course, but he had never understood the phrase’s genesis until this very second. He glanced at Number One. Her face revealed nothing. He hoped his was as expressionless.
“You are looking for us,” Spock said.
“I have been.”
Spock was about to inquire why, when he saw what Vlasidovich was wearing. His dress uniform.
The officers’ dinner.
“You are not on bridge, Commander, you are not in lab or your quarters, Mr. Spock, you are seen together in shuttlebay earlier … and so I add two plus two and come here.”
“I beg your pardon, Captain. The time slipped away from me. I shall return to my cabin and dress for dinner.”
“Please do, Mr. Spock. Immediately. I would like for us please to enter as group. Enterprise senior officers. Yes?”
“Yes, sir,” said Number One.
“Yes, sir,” said Spock.
“Good. And in future …” Vlasidovich wagged a finger. “Do not think to keep secrets aboard my starship, please. I know everything that is happening here.”
FIFTEEN
Biology. The tallith’s quandary. Zandar, who seemed to be in charge of the laboratory, did not know what Deleen had been referring to.
“I have been tasked with assisting you in your analysis of the serum. This is my duty, as the tallith has outlined it.” She gestured to the LeKarz. “Shall we?”
Boyce shrugged. “Lead on.”
He supposed he’d find out what Deleen had been referring to sooner or later.
He followed Zandar over to the machine they’d stolen from Starbase 18.
“I will bring up the relevant information on the primary display,” she said, keying in a series of commands. “The molecular breakdown of the serum, its key components, and their relevant chemical analogues.”
Boyce leaned over her shoulder as unobtrusively as he could and watched her work. Right away, he saw that he was going to have to start over at ground zero. Zandar might have been a competent scientist (or not—he really had no way of knowing), but she had a lot to learn when it came to the LeKarz. The machine had come from Starbase 18 in lockdown mode, naturally. The Orions had managed to bypass the password protocols, to get it working, but they hadn’t tied in the analysis array to the main memory banks. That left half the machine’s functionality—the specialized, high-level databases Starbase 18’s personnel had either purchased or programmed in—inoperative, inaccessible for comparative purposes. The analysis they’d done—the work they’d asked the LeKarz to do—was incomplete.
“Is there a problem?” Zandar asked.
He was about to tell her that she was operating the LeKarz, in effect, with blinders on, that she should summon the ship’s top computer expert, when he realized that there could be a lot of very sensitive medical information in those databases. A lot of material the Federation might not want the Orions getting their hands on.
“Yes,” he said. “I prefer to do my own lab work.”
Zandar’s expression darkened. “I can assure you, Dr. Boyce, the procedure we followed in analyzing the serum did not deviate in any manner from—”
“Nonetheless,” Boyce interrupted, “I’d like to start fresh. With another sample of the serum.”
She glared at him a few seconds longer. “As you wish,” she said finally, and then pulled a stasis cube from a nearby storage locker.
Boyce inserted it into the machine’s input module, then stepped up beside the console.
A LeKarz. It had been a long, long time since he’d used one of these.
He reached for the controls and then realized that Zandar was standing right behind him.
He turned. “If you don’t mind, I prefer privacy when I work.”
“The tallith said I was to stay apprised of your progress.”
“Well, I haven’t made any yet, have I?”
Zandar had no answer for that. She bowed, backed off, and left him alone.
Boyce went to work.
The interface came back to him immediately. Kind of like riding a bike. It was almost as easy to override the security lock on Starbase 18’s databases. Within minutes, he found himself staring at a screen that displayed the contents of the LeKarz’s internal information clusters. Most of the machine’s data, he saw, were contained in a node labeled “Kronos.”
Familiar-sounding name, and a second later, he realized why. The Klingon home world. He was curious what the connection was. Jaya hadn’t mentioned anything to do with Klingons the last time he spoke to her.
His curiosity would have to wait, though. He had work to do.
The deeper he got into that work analyzing the serum, the clearer it became to him why the Orions had been so intent on obtaining the LeKarz. The machine had been created to mimic the behavior of genetic material in situ; the serum was even more sophisticated. And its behavior in isolation, as opposed to its behavior within the serum—and within the Orion bloodstream, for that matter—added another layer of complexity to the analysis. It took him a good hour to sort out the results he understood from those he didn’t.
The vial was full of all sorts of stuff he knew for a fact had no effect on the aging process. Different kinds of hormones, chemical substances that in humans had the effect of minimizing the cell damage caused by free radicals, stimulants to speed up the metabolic process. Possibly those things all had different effects on the Orion circulatory system from those on the human. He didn’t think so, but he made notes on some of those elements he thought deserving of further study.
That left him with a single, very complicated chemical compound, a polymer—a repeating chain of amino acids—that resembled the DNA molecule more than anything else, though instead of being made up of four basic acids, he saw at a quick glance that this compound contained almost a dozen.
“It took us years to identify the molecule. You do it in a single afternoon.”
Boyce turned and saw Zandar standing over his shoulder. “I’ve had practice,” he said.
“Argelius.”
“And other places.” He was getting tired of everyone reminding him of Argelius. “So what is it?” he asked.
“You are looking, Dr. Boyce, at a molecule we’ve named gamina.”
“A key ingredient in the serum, I a
ssume.”
“The key ingredient.”
“You’ve tried to replicate it.”
“We have.”
“And?”
“Here. You can judge our efforts for yourself. As I know you prefer to do.”
Ouch. Well, he deserved that, he supposed.
Zandar produced a second stasis cube, one labeled “Gamina Analogue.” Boyce ran it through the LeKarz as well. He took as long with those tests as he had with the original molecule. The results puzzled him. He ran the tests a second time. The data came out just the same.
He stood back from the LeKarz. Zandar was right there, alongside him.
“There’s no difference between the two,” he said.
She nodded. “Not that we could find.”
“They have the same molecular weight, same chemical composition, same atomic structure.”
“Yes. But the analogue doesn’t work.”
“Show me,” he said. “Please.”
She stared at him a moment, then nodded. “Of course.”
She set up a simulation on the LeKarz, a split screen. The original gamina molecule on the left, the gamina analogue on the right. She introduced both into a computer-modeled simulation of the Orion bloodstream. Nothing happened. The gamina molecule—both versions—drifted.
She accelerated the simulation. On the left, the gamina molecule began attaching itself to other chemicals in the bloodstream, bonding with them, transforming them. Boyce estimated that it would take him weeks to figure out exactly what was happening there. At a minimum.
On the right, the gamina analogue was bonding as well. But only with itself. Bonding and forming a compound that decreased in motility and flexibility with each additional molecule that latched on. A molecule that soon became large enough to interfere with the flow of the bloodstream itself.
“This is what’s causing the distension of the veins,” Boyce realized. “In Liyan and her daughter.”
“Yes.”
The simulation continued, the transformations on the left screen, the agglomeration of gamina analogue on the right. Blood flow continued to decline; blood pressure, conversely, began to rise. The condition was dangerous, Boyce realized. More than that, potentially fatal.
He remembered the look that had flashed across Liyan’s face when she had seen the veins on her arms—not just surprise but fear. He understood why.
M’Lor says you must not excite yourself unnecessarily.
Her blood pressure had to be a point of concern as well. Maybe he was wrong, Boyce thought. Maybe Liyan was sicker than he’d assumed.
“Do you have her medical history?” he asked Zandar. “The tallith.”
She hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Yes. I will bring it up on one of the terminals. Come.”
She led him across the bay to another terminal where she brought up Liyan’s medical history. Complete medical history, starting from when she was a child. There was a lot of data; Zandar left him to browse through them. Hundreds of different screens of information, including recordings and photographs. He was particularly struck by an image of Liyan as a young woman, the tallith at twenty standard years. She looked exactly like her daughter.
He wondered when she’d changed.
The machine’s primary screen was movable; he rotated it so that instead of facing him, the screen lay flat before him, like the surface of a desk. He drew a line with his finger and split the display window. Liyan’s treatment history on the left, a blank screen on the right. One by one, he dragged the images of Liyan from their associated historical files into the empty space, till he had them arranged one on top of the other, earliest to latest. He closed the treatment-history pane and set the images to play before him in a slide show.
The first one, the young Liyan, as she’d looked seventy years earlier. The next few, much the same. Then one of her in a body cast, roughly, if he was remembering right, at the time of the Klingon attack. The time of their discovery at Zai Romeen. More images flew past. He came to one from sixty-six years ago. Liyan posed in front of a blank wall, wearing a medical gown, a determined look on her face.
He found the associated medical file and read through it. One phrase jumped out at him right away. A notation from the attending physician: “Stardate 1807.1. Treatments begin.”
Boyce moved on to the next image. It was, according to the date, two weeks later. Boyce detected no significant difference in her appearance. Except …
He scrolled back to the first image and then forward to the second one again. Liyan was dressed the same in both, posed the exact same way, standing in front of the same nondescript wall, in what Boyce thought he recognized now as the medical wing. A plain white wall, the same shade in both pictures.
Her skin color, though, looked different to him, slightly darker in the second. He moved ahead to the next picture and then the next. Two months of treatment. By then, the differences in skin tone were obvious. As were other changes.
In the first two years of treatment, she grew six inches. She gained thirty pounds. But somehow, the weight, the height …
She’d been an attractive woman before the treatments began; afterward, even more so. Much more so. Just looking at these pictures, Boyce found her . . . beautiful? Yes. Alluring? Absolutely. More than that, though. Really, it was hard to stop looking at her. She was—what was the word he was looking for?
Intoxicating. That was it. Intoxicating.
Good God. Biology. The tallith’s quandary.
He knew now exactly what Deleen had been talking about.
SIXTEEN
On a handful of occasions, Captain Pike had conducted ship’s business during dinner. Those meals were typically in Enterprise ’s briefing room and consisted of food designed to be eaten quickly, by hand, with a minimum of fuss, a minimum of distraction, so that more important matters could be attended to.
Captain Vlasidovich’s idea of a working dinner was entirely different.
For one thing, the meal was in the officers’ mess, rather than the briefing room. For another, all attendees were in full dress uniform, rather than the everyday Starfleet outfit. And they were being served in courses—a wide variety of cuisines from cultures and races all across the galaxy as opposed to buffet- style. There were twenty of them in all, the senior staff of three Constitution -class starships currently orbiting 55-Hamilton. It felt more like a state dinner or a banquet than a working meal. Spock did not approve. Initially. And yet …
As the evening wore on, he realized that the structure of the meal—the breakdown of the dining experience into courses, with associated interruptions for presentation of the dishes, serving of the food, clearing of the plates—facilitated shifts of conversational topics and partners. Spock was seated at the far end of the long dining table from Captain Vlasidovich, who, as host, was at the head. On his immediate left, at the foot of the table, was Captain Harrari of Hood and to his right, Hood ’s science officer, Lieutenant Carl Vayentes.
Enterprise was represented by the captain, Number One, himself, Chief Pitcairn, and Lieutenants Hardin and Garrison.
For most of the meal, Spock just listened to the others talk. In particular, Captain Harrari, who seemed to him a formidable intellect. She held forth on a wide variety of subjects during the meal, discussed warp technology with Chief Pitcairn, colonial politics with Captain Nolan, the current state of Starfleet terraforming with Lieutenant Garrison and himself.
When the plates at last had been cleared and dessert and after-dinner drinks had been served and set out on the table, Captain Vlasidovich tapped his coffee cup with a spoon, signaling for quiet.
He stood and raised his glass, which was filled with a pale yellow sparkling beverage of some sort. An alcoholic beverage. Spock did not approve of alcohol.
“I wish to propose toast,” Vlasidovich said. “To crews of Excalibur, Hood, and Enterprise . Braver men and women I could not wish to go to battle with.”
Shouts of “Hear, hear!” echoed down
the table. All raised their glasses and drank. Most of them were drinking alcoholic beverages as well. Spock was drinking water. Number One—who sat far down the table from him, on the opposite side, between Captain Nolan and Lieutenant Commander Radovitch of Excalibur —was drinking tea. It had been a long day for the two of them; it was going to be an even longer night.
They had plans.
Upon arriving at his own quarters to change for dinner, Spock had sat down at his workstation, intending to send Enterprise ’s first officer a message. Encrypted, naturally. He found one waiting for him, from her, as he discovered when he broke the encryption on it, a process that took him close to a minute to complete.
Her thoughts paralleled his. Enterprise ’s senior officers off-duty for the evening, following the banquet. Hood and Excalibur ’s not on shift, either?
It was the perfect time for the mission they had discussed, a trip to the surface of 55-Hamilton.
He looked across the table now and met Number One’s gaze.
Not long now.
“Also.” Vlasidovich remained standing, but the broad smile on his face vanished, replaced by a more serious, somber expression. “I wish to salute Captain Christopher Pike.”
The conversation around the table died.
“And crew from Magellan, ” Vlasidovich continued. “We serve—we fight if necessary—to make sure their sacrifice was not in vain.”
The “Hear, hears” returned, even louder than before.
“I’ll second that toast with one of my own.” Chief Pitcairn stood now as well. “To Captain Pike, to Ben Tuval. If there are better men in the galaxy, I haven’t met them yet.”
Pitcairn drained his glass and sat, almost before anyone else could join him.
The chief had been largely silent all evening. Spock would characterize his mood as brooding, verging on anger, even. The captain’s death had upset him more than most. Spock knew Pike’s first assignment on graduation from the Academy had been aboard the Olympus, a light cruiser. The captain and Pitcairn—already chief engineer aboard that vessel—had met there and become, if not friends, then great admirers of each other’s capabilities.