by David Mack
“What kind of Vulcan pep talk is that?”
“Gentlemen, enough,” Kirk cut in. “We have a job to do, and there’s more at stake here than just our lives. So let’s keep the banter to a minimum.”
Spock absorbed the criticism in silence. McCoy acknowledged it with a contrite nod as he said, “Sorry, Captain.”
The trio continued in silence, surrounded by their security phalanx, and approached the entrance to the Federation delegation’s dormitory. A knot of local peace officers and university security stood between the walkway and the closed door. One officer, who looked to be in charge, stepped forward and raised his hand toward the landing party. “Halt and identify—”
“Kirk, Enterprise,” the captain said, leading his team past the local authorities without pausing to entertain questions or doubts. If the officer in charge had any protest, he failed to express it before Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and their armed defenders entered the building and continued upstairs to the delegation’s private wing.
The accommodations were less posh than they sounded. Most of the rooms on the upper floors were converted student dwellings. Quite spare in their furnishings, the rooms were devoid of decoration or anything that might be mistaken for luxury. Kirk eyed the nearly empty spaces that typically housed undergraduates and wondered to himself why modern educational institutions still expected students to live like monks.
Even the Academy put a few murals on the walls once in a while.
He and the landing party arrived at the open door to the suite of Ambassador Sarek and his wife, Amanda, whom Kirk knew better as Spock’s parents. He looked back at the security officers who trailed him, Spock, and McCoy. “Wait outside,” he said to Lieutenant Patel, who nodded once before pointing his subordinates toward defensive positions.
Inside the suite, a nurse and a lone medical doctor tended to Sarek and Amanda. Kirk queried the Andorian physician with a look, and the thaan beckoned him and the other Enterprise officers inside. McCoy made a point of greeting his peer before anyone else did. “Doctor Leonard McCoy, ship’s surgeon, Enterprise.”
“Doctor Hollishaal th’Carinoor. I am pleased to report that neither the ambassador nor his wife were seriously harmed. Just minor contusions for His Excellency.”
“Thank heavens for that.” McCoy pointed at Sarek’s chart. “May I?”
The Andorian looked at Sarek, who granted permission with one deep nod. “He was my surgeon when my heart failed several months ago.” Reassured, th’Carinoor handed Sarek’s medical chart to McCoy for review.
While the doctors were occupied, Kirk waited for his first officer to greet his father. Sensing that Spock was not keen to break the ice, he took the task upon himself. “Mister Ambassador, we came as soon as we—”
“You have ruined everything, Kirk.”
Sarek’s rebuke took Kirk by surprise. “Excuse me? I—that is, we—my crew just saved your life, Mister Ambassador. We—”
“Undermined my authority and squandered my last iota of credibility with the Klingon delegation. Really, Captain—for a man who has spent the better part of his career dealing with the Klingons, you seem not to understand them at all.”
Kirk felt his blood pressure rising. He turned away from Sarek to tell the local medical and security personnel assembled in the suite, “Anyone not wearing a Starfleet uniform, get out.” The captain noted hesitation from the nurse and physician. He stared them down. “This matter is now under Starfleet jurisdiction. Get out. That’s an order.”
This time there were no stragglers. All the civilians except Sarek and Amanda made hasty retreats, leaving the diplomat, his wife, and their Starfleet visitors to confer in privacy.
Kirk shot a look at McCoy. “Doctor? The door, please.”
McCoy closed the suite’s doors and locked them.
Bolstered by a moderate degree of certainty that they were now free from eavesdroppers, Kirk asked Sarek, “What happened over there, Mister Ambassador? The truth, please.”
“I went to assess the facts concerning Councillor Gorkon’s disappearance. It was my assumption that the Klingons would be willing to entertain reasonable explanations.”
An arched eyebrow conveyed McCoy’s cynical appraisal of the ambassador’s thinking. “And how did that work out for you?”
“Less well than I had expected.”
“Indeed,” Spock said. As innocuous as his reply had been, it still drew a cold stare from his father, which suggested to Kirk that old hard feelings still lingered between the two.
Amanda tried to short-circuit the tension between her husband and son. “We’re both lucky to be alive, Captain. I, for one, am grateful you and your ship arrived when you did.”
“You’re most welcome.”
Sarek remained rooted in his icy condemnation. “You will receive no thanks from me, Kirk. You have interfered in a political discourse of a most complex nature.”
“Really, Ambassador? It seems fairly simple to me. I’m told Prang had a disruptor to your head, and his friend had a dagger at your wife’s throat. From where I’m standing, it sounds as if we saved your lives.”
“Perhaps.” Sarek affected an imperious manner. “But your intervention may have just squandered this galaxy’s best hope for peace.”
McCoy chimed in: “It’s hard to make peace from the grave, Mister Ambassador.”
“He’s right, Ambassador,” Kirk added. “Klingons have no respect for martyrs.”
Sarek folded his hands together inside his cassock’s generous, drooping sleeves. “Not true, Kirk. I have heard many tales of Klingons honoring those who died for noble causes.”
“Died in battle,” Kirk corrected. “Not for peace. There’s a difference.”
The Vulcan diplomat bristled at Kirk’s point. “I lack the time to discuss the nuances of Klingon martial philosophy and its relationship to their politics.” He stood and smoothed the front of his scuffed, soiled robe, then extended his arm as an invitation to his wife, who moved to his side and snaked her own arm around his. He nodded once to Kirk. “You did what you thought was necessary, Captain. But I cannot help but be disappointed by the need for your continued involvement. If history is any guide, the presence of military forces at a diplomatic function can only bode ill for its outcome.”
“I agree,” Kirk said. “And just as soon as the HoS’leth breaks orbit, so will we.”
Sarek let that condition pass without remark. He led his wife out of the suite’s main room and escorted her into the privacy of their bedchambers, whose door he closed quite firmly behind them—no doubt as a signal of his desire for seclusion and an end to Kirk’s interrogation.
Only after the door was shut did Kirk realize no words of greeting had passed between Spock and his parents. McCoy, noting with sour disapproval the dynamic that obtained between Sarek, Amanda, and their son, quipped in his dry Southern drawl, “Another happy family reunion, eh, Spock?”
The first officer let the jibe pass unremarked, electing instead to exit the suite in stony silence. Watching his friend leave, clearly stung but too aloof to admit it, left Kirk with a new, more bitter appreciation for the long rift that still lingered between Spock and his father.
* * *
Before inspecting the bedroom that had been set aside for Councillor Gorkon’s exclusive use, Spock would not have been able to say what it was he was looking for, or what he had expected to find there. In neither case would he have assumed the scene would be so mundane. If there was any aspect of the Klingon diplomat’s disappearance that deserved to be termed “baffling,” it was the utter banality of the details he had left behind.
Over the objections of the Klingons, more personnel from the Enterprise had arrived in the past hour to secure the missing man’s personal spaces and effects. In charge of the search had been Lieutenant Ravi Patel from the security division. Backed by a team of forensic inv
estigation specialists from the Enterprise, he had been directing the scanning, sorting, and logging of every tiny detail that might at some point become evidence.
So far, however, none of those details appeared to add up to anything at all.
The captain entered the bedroom, and Doctor McCoy was close behind him. The pair took note of the forensic team scouring the room under Patel’s supervision, and then Kirk faced Spock. “What have we found?”
“Nothing of note, Captain. No signs of forced entry. And no evidence of a struggle.”
Kirk processed that. “Contradicting our theory that he was kidnapped.”
“So it would seem.” Spock pointed at the empty bed. “Our scans have revealed no sign of Klingon blood and no atomized particles consistent with disintegration by any known weapon, chemical, or process.” He directed the captain’s attention toward the doors to the suite’s main room. “The Klingons have already shared their internal security footage. No one entered or left the room after Gorkon retired for the evening last night.”
The captain gestured at the windows. “What about exterior sensors?”
“Also negative,” Spock said. “Campus security adjusted all external sensors to provide maximum coverage of the delegates’ dormitory facilities, as well as the grounds around them. There was no one outside in the vicinity of either building last night.”
McCoy moved along the room’s periphery, inspecting small items and scanning things with his medical tricorder. Kirk paid the physician no mind, choosing instead to catch the eye of the security officer leading the investigation. “Mister Patel, do we have evidence that anyone other than Councillor Gorkon or members of his entourage were inside this room before us?”
“None, sir,” Patel said. “The only genetic material we’ve detected that we’re sure was here during the overnight hours was Gorkon’s. If someone else was here, they left no trace.”
Kirk frowned and took another gander at the room, as if he might now notice some vital clue that had eluded trained investigators and the impartial senses of tricorders. “So we have no evidence Gorkon left, and none that he was assassinated or kidnapped.”
Spock tried to offer his captain a reason for optimism. “The absence of evidence does not negate the fact that Councillor Gorkon is now, indisputably, absent.”
“Meaning what, Spock?”
“Regardless of what we can prove, Gorkon is most assuredly gone. If he is gone by his own will, it is without explanation, and we are obliged in the name of diplomacy to determine why. And if he is gone against his will, our duty is to determine who is to blame and to ensure the councillor’s safe return. Either way, it falls to us to determine Gorkon’s whereabouts and take proper action.”
The proposition drew an outburst from McCoy. “Determine his whereabouts? And how are we supposed to do that, Spock?”
“I didn’t say I knew how to locate him, Doctor. If I possessed such knowledge, I assure you, I would already have done so.”
Disgruntled, McCoy turned away and continued his own tedious item-by-item scan of Gorkon’s belongings, grumbling under his breath the entire time.
Kirk took Spock aside and lowered his voice. “Bones has a point, Spock. We have no evidence and no options. How do you recommend we continue the search?”
“Difficult to say, Captain. We might wish to gather data from the planetary defense network, to look for signs of anomalous energy signatures, unidentified encrypted signal traffic, or other indications that—”
The doors behind them burst open, flew inward, and rebounded off the walls. A squad of local police backed through the doorway, hounded by an insistent push of enraged Klingons, whose shouted alien vulgarities assaulted Spock’s sensitive Vulcan hearing.
The captain intercepted the brouhaha with a fierce bellow. “What’s the meaning of this?”
Councillor Prang shouted back, “We want justice!” Behind him, his fellows roared.
“Quiet!” snapped the boss of the local police, Chief Nomi Wreade. She was tall but slight of frame, and her jet-black hair was coiffed in a smart bob. The faintest hint of a deeper register in her slightly nasal voice suggested the transitional nature of her gender, but there was no mistaking her authority as her deputies and their Klingon harassers all froze in place, arrested by the power of her voice. “Councillor Prang! You and your people need to back off. Now.”
On a nod from Prang, the Klingons all took a full step back from their confrontation with the New Athens police. Satisfied the situation was at least momentarily under control, Kirk approached Wreade. “Thank you, Chief.”
“Don’t thank me unless you’ve got something. I can’t hold them back forever.”
Taking his cue from the captain’s disappointed expression, Spock told Wreade, “We are still analyzing the evidence and developing our hypothesis.”
Wreade shot a nervous glance at the Klingons, then looked back at Spock and dropped her voice to a husky whisper. “Prang wants me to file this as a murder.”
Kirk forestalled that notion with a raised hand. “Absolutely not.”
The chief turned her skeptical glare on the captain. “You have proof it’s not a murder?”
“More to the point,” Spock interjected, “you have no proof that it is. And absent such evidence, most notably that of a corpse, you have no basis for labeling this a homicide.”
She surveyed the locked room and the team of quiet, methodical Starfleet forensic technicians. “In that case, I have to file it as a kidnapping.”
Again, the captain shook his head. “You can’t do that, either.”
“Why not?”
Spock closed the suite’s double doors to render the rest of their conversation private. “Because, Chief Wreade, the moment you do, you will have provided Councillor Prang and the Klingon Empire with a justification for war.”
His news flustered the police chief. “So how am I supposed to classify this mess?”
Kirk mustered his most disarming smile. “In the name of interstellar peace, I need to ask that you treat Gorkon’s disappearance, for the time being, as a missing person case.”
“The Klingons won’t like that.”
As always, the captain met grim facts with gallows humor.
“True. But the people of Centaurus really won’t like being exterminated by the Klingons. So do them and us a favor, Chief: file this as a missing person until we can prove otherwise.”
Twelve
Dawn’s cool breezes had given way to a muggy morning on the campus quad by the time Kirk left the Klingon delegation’s dormitory. As he had expected, the classification of Gorkon’s absence as a missing person without evidence of foul play had enraged the Klingons while simultaneously depriving them of an excuse to begin sterilizing the planet’s surface. It was a less than perfect solution, but Kirk’s brief tenure as a commanding officer had already taught him the value of expedient delaying tactics when optimal outcomes remained out of reach.
On the quad’s well-manicured lawn, Kirk’s landing party had gathered to return to the Enterprise. Doctor McCoy made a point of standing apart from the rest of the group. As Kirk approached, he noticed his friend was distracted and distraught.
Before Kirk could call out to the doctor, the air between them shimmered with the first sign of an incoming transporter signal. Next came the semimusical droning of a matter-transmission beam. Six humanoid figures took shape inside glittering shells of golden light. Once the coruscating effect started to fade, Kirk recognized Lieutenant Commander Scott, who had beamed down with five other engineers—three women and two men.
He intercepted the chief engineer as the older man surveyed his environs. “Mister Scott. Good of you to join us.”
Scott flashed a broad smile. “Wouldn’t miss it, sir.”
“I didn’t think you’d find reinforcing a security shield so exciting.”
“It’s not the work, sir. It’s a chance to observe the Klingon engineers. I’ve been keen to get a closer look at their tools and their methods.”
I should have known. “Very good. But take care, Scotty. If you’re watching them—”
“They’ll be watching us. Aye, sir. That’s the price of admission.”
He dismissed Scott with a nod as he stepped past him. “Carry on.”
The engineers regrouped and started their hike across the campus to the nearest of the mobile shield generators that were protecting the peace conference from outside interference. Low murmurs of upbeat chatter passed from one engineer to another. Kirk recognized their strange brand of enthusiasm: it was the excitement of specialists who spent most of their waking hours in the bowels of a starship, looking at the same blue-gray bulkheads day in and day out. Any chance to venture off the ship and tinker with something new was cause for celebration.
Kirk waited until they were out of earshot before he sidled over to McCoy. Keeping his voice down, he asked, “Bones? Are you all right?”
His question jolted McCoy out of a somber reverie. “Hm? Oh, yes. I’m fine, Jim.”
“Are you sure? It looks to me like something’s bothering you.”
McCoy folded his hands behind his back, then pivoted to one side, then another, as if worried someone was eavesdropping on them. “I didn’t want to say anything . . .”
“Out with it, Bones.”
A frown and a furrowed brow deepened the canyons of concern that marked McCoy’s face. “It’s my daughter.”
That caught Kirk off guard. McCoy rarely mentioned his only child. They had been estranged since his bitter divorce from her mother years earlier. “Joanna? What about her?”
“She’s a student here, at the College of Medical Science. Second year of nursing school.” He looked over his shoulder. “Pretty sure it’s a short walk that way.”
“You should go say hello.”
McCoy regarded Kirk with a stink-eye glare. “I’d sooner eat my phaser.”