Legacies #2

by David Mack

  “Yet here we are, creature. And this time you’ll find no traitors in our ranks. No quislings waiting to aid your escape.” One of hir mechanical arms reached over to a console beside hir platform and manipulated its controls with the limb’s prehensile clasping digits. A harsh white light snapped on directly above the dais, cocooning Una, Martinez, and Shimizu in a blinding glare that left them unable to see any of the Jatohr in the shadows beyond.

  Una smiled. “Is this meant to frighten me?”

  “I ask the questions here, creature. Do you still have the Transfer Key?”

  Lies seemed to be in order. “The what?”

  “The master control device for the sanctuary’s transfer-­field generator! Do you have it?”

  She turned out her pockets and shook her head. “Nope. What does it look like?”

  Woryan’s temper worsened. “Lies! You must have had the Key! There is no other way you could have come here.” Hir outburst led to waves of gurgle-hiss chatter among hir peers. Another subsonic pulse quelled the susurrus, enabling hir to continue. “If you came here without the Key, then it must be on the other side. Is someone waiting to reopen the doorway?”

  “I wish I knew. I just cross-wired your sanctuary’s main console and hopped on through. I thought I left it open behind me, but I guess it closed as soon as I got here.” Una shrugged. “What is one to do?”

  “Do not mock me, creature.”

  “You need to lighten up. If you ever get your wish and bring your band of refugees over to my universe, you’ll have to get used to this kind of thing.”

  “She’s right,” Martinez added. “One look at you guys and the Tellarites won’t stop dreaming up insults for at least a decade.”

  Woryan bellowed, “Silence!”

  Una scrunched her brow. “If we’re silent, we can’t ­answer questions. Are we done?”

  “Do not test my patience further, creature.”

  Shimizu pointed at Woryan and stage-whispered to Una, “You heard it. Don’t tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing.” A crackling jolt of electrical energy shot down from outside the tower of light and left a smoking scorch between Shimizu’s feet. “Like that.”

  “Enough!” Una shouted up at the imperious Jatohr. “This is all a waste—of energy, lives, and time. We don’t need to be enemies. You don’t have to invade our universe, or even our galaxy. I don’t know what conditions you’re used to, but our realm, as you call it, has more than enough room to accommodate all your people without violence.”

  “That is not our way,” said a different Jatohr voice.

  “Wrong,” Martinez hollered back. “It’s not the way you knew. But it could be your way forward. Our people could help you colonize new worlds, planets you could have to yourselves.”

  “Planets are not enough,” Woryan said. “We have always been alone in our universe, and so will we remain.”

  “Not in our universe, you won’t,” Shimizu quipped.

  His moment of snark gave Una an idea. “Here’s a question, Woryan. If you and your people like your universes empty, why not just look for one that—and this is just a suggestion, mind you—isn’t positively crammed with billions of other intelligent species?”

  “Finding other universes that are hospitable to life but not already overrun with semi-sentient creatures such as yourselves has so far proved impossible. Every universe we have found beyond our own has either been inimical to the sustenance of organic life, or it has been infested with native forms in need of removal as a condition of our settlement.” The brilliant pillar of light snapped off, leaving Una seeing a dark haze between herself and the ocean of Jatohr swaying in waves around her. Woryan continued, “This universe is dying, creature, and soon we must depart or else perish with it. Your realm is the closest dimension, and therefore the one that takes the least energy to reach. So it is there we must go.”

  A sickly green ray streaked down from the underside of Woryan’s platform and seized Una. Like a tractor beam it lifted her half a meter off the dais—but then it began to twist the upper and lower halves of her body in different directions. She tried to hold in her cries of pain and alarm, but failed. The first of her screams echoed off the chamber’s pearlescent walls as Woryan demanded, “Tell me when the portal to your universe will open again.”

  “I don’t know,” she said through teeth gritted in agony. “It’s already late! Something must have gone wrong!”

  The viridescent beam released her. She dropped into the waiting arms of Martinez and Shimizu, who eased her down onto the dais.

  “So the gateway could open at any time,” Woryan said. “Then it is time to make ready the next phase of our invasion. When next the gateway opens, we must be there to launch our attack.” Hir next words dripped with condescension. “On behalf of my people, I thank you, creatures. You have been most helpful.”

  The surface of the dais, which had been smooth only moments earlier, opened wide beneath them until just a narrow ring around its edge remained. Una and her friends dropped into a black pit whose rocky nadir she met with enough force to plunge her into the deeper, colder darkness of oblivion.

  Twenty-four

  Kovor’s face filled the main viewscreen just as his rasping voice thundered in the close quarters of the Enterprise’s bridge. “I don’t know what trickery your ambassador worked on Prang, nor do I care. He can order me to help you—but you and I both know that’s not why we’re here.”

  “I can’t speak for your motives, General,” Kirk replied, “but I make no secret of mine. I’m here to do whatever is needed to secure the peace treaty.”

  His declaration made Kovor sniff and growl with disdain. “Lies, Kirk! We are men of war. Always have been. Always will be. Why deny it now?”

  “Because war has . . . outlived its usefulness. A new age is coming, General. We can either take a hand in building it—or we can become obsolete.”

  Even across the subspace channel, Kirk felt the ­Klingon general size him up. It was hard to tell if he was getting through to Kovor—or whether it would matter if he did. The scarred old warrior brooded behind his gray bramble of a beard. “Had I not seen your delegation’s man vanish, I wouldn’t believe your story of a weapon that disappears people without a trace. But I’m not ready to put the blame on a third party when the one in front of me is far more plausible.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Kirk said. “We have nothing to gain by—”

  “Don’t you? What about the sabotage of my ship? Did you really think I’d lower my defenses and let you transmit an attack into my vessel’s own memory banks?”

  Invited by a look from Kirk, Spock stepped to the captain’s side to respond to Kovor. “General, if preserving the integrity of your ship’s systems is your concern, I can beam over to the HoS’leth with the necessary sensor protocols on a data card.”

  “What difference would that make?”

  “You could verify the benign nature of our shared intelligence on a dedicated system, one separate from your ship’s network. When your crew has verified the data is safe, only then would it be introduced into your sensor matrix.” Prodded by another glance from Kirk, the first officer added, “However, I should stress, General, that time is a factor.”

  The general swiveled his command chair away from the screen to confer with one of his off-screen subordinates. While the Klingons huddled, Kirk shot a glance to port, where Mister Scott worked at the bridge’s engineering station, revising formulae he had been developing with Spock in an effort to block the targeting capabilities of the Transfer Key. Based on the engineer’s angry grimaces and frustrated thumpings of the console, Kirk guessed their progress was proving slower than either of them had expected.

  On the viewscreen, Kovor turned back toward the conversation. “Very well, Kirk. Send me your first officer, and have him bring these ‘upgrades’ for our
sensors. I’ll be the judge of whether they live up to your boasts. But if I see the least hint of sabotage, I—”

  A searing flash filled the screen as an unearthly whoop resounded over the speakers. When the whiteout on the viewscreen faded back to a normal image, Kovor was gone, and the command crews of both ships stared in mute horror at each other across the subspace channel.

  Then a geyser of Klingon epithets erupted on the bridge of the HoS’leth. Kirk didn’t recognize any of the words he was hearing, but he would have understood their tone in any language: the Klingons wanted blood. Most likely, mine.

  Lomila hurled herself into the command chair of the HoS’leth, and with one shouted command from her, the intership channel was closed. The Enterprise’s viewscreen reverted automatically to the ship’s forward view—of the HoS’leth coming about to face them.

  Sulu declared with alarm, “Captain! They’re assuming an attack posture!”

  Beside him at the forward console, Chekov kept his eyes on the viewscreen as he reached for the defensive controls. “Shields up, Captain?”

  At the sensor controls, Spock peered into the blue glow of the hooded display. “The HoS’leth has raised its shields and is charging disruptors and torpedo tubes.”

  From the other side of the bridge, Scott asked, “Should I sound red alert, sir?”

  In the span of mere seconds, Kirk watched his mission start to unravel. He thought of the Enterprise’s ­mission the year before to Organia, and of his and Spock’s confrontation there with Kor, the Klingon commander who had tried in vain to subjugate the Organians, a species of energy beings who had been masquerading as mere mortals of flesh and bone. Then, too, Kirk had stood at the flash point of what had threatened to become a war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire—one the Organians had forced both sides to abandon, lest the two rival powers see their formidable militaries permanently enfeebled.

  This was supposed to be the beginning of the end of all that useless posturing, a step toward a day when we can put an end to our saber rattling. Now one traitor—he corrected himself—one spy has us back at each other’s throats? Are we really this foolish? This insane?

  Spock’s voice arrested his introspection. “Captain.”

  Kirk blinked, then remembered Sarek’s criticism: “For a man who has spent the better part of his career dealing with the Klingons, you seem not to understand them at all.”

  He set his mind on a path of action. I know them better than Sarek thinks.

  “Uhura, hail the HoS’leth, all frequencies.”

  As the lieutenant transmitted the hail, Chekov asked again, “Shields, Captain?”

  “Negative, Ensign. Shields stay down. Mister Sulu, do not charge weapons.”

  Frightened looks were volleyed from one officer to another on the bridge, but no one spoke a word of protest. In the tense hush, Spock’s voice rang out clearly. “They are locking disruptors onto multiple areas of our saucer and engineering section.”

  Uhura swiveled her chair toward Kirk. “Channel open, sir.”

  “Commander Lomila, this is Captain Kirk. We are not your enemy. Our shields are down, and our weapons are not charged. We are on a mission of peace and self-preservation. If you care about either of those things . . . hold your fire. Please respond.”

  On the screen, the D7 cruiser slowed its approach, then came to a halt. Its forward torpedo tube shone bright red, a harbinger of an imminent launch.

  Kirk looked to Spock for new information. His first officer lifted his eyes from the sensor hood. “They are holding station six hundred kilometers off our bow. Their shields are still up; their weapon systems remain charged and locked on to our key systems.”

  Rising from the center seat, Kirk repeated, “Commander Lomila, please respond.”

  All was quiet on the bridge except for the low thrum of air moving through the vents overhead and the gentle feedback tones from the ship’s computers.

  Scott muttered, “What’re they waiting for? They’ve got us dead to rights!”

  “Don’t rush them, Mister Scott.” Kirk couldn’t take his eyes off the smoldering crimson glow of the Klingon ship’s torpedo tube. “If their response turns out to be bad news . . . I’m just as happy to wait for it.”

  * * *

  Never in her life had Commander Lomila felt so close to being the target of a mutiny as at the moment she roared out, “Hold!”

  On the main screen was the Enterprise, its most vulnerable points plotted and locked into the gunners’ sights. Sensors had confirmed the infamous Starfleet battle cruiser was running with its shields down and its weapons disengaged. Kirk and his ship—a prize that had taunted and eluded so many Klingon starship ­commanders—was about to become her most decisive victory.

  Then she’d heard Kirk’s appeal for reason.

  It stirred no pity in her warrior’s heart—but it did arouse her curiosity. Why would he stand down rather than defend himself and his crew? How could he be so cavalier with his ship? Then a deeper misgiving filled her heart; who would sing songs of her victory over a vessel that had put up no defense? What honor would there be in so hollow a triumph?

  Something was very wrong. She felt it.

  Lieutenant Marga, the senior weapons officer and next behind Lomila in the ship’s chain of command, rushed to the captain’s seat and pressed himself against the base of its elevated dais. “Why do we hold? They are right there!”

  “We hold because I have said it. That is all you need to know.”

  Gunner K’mgar looked over his shoulder at Lomila and squinted against the bright white battle lights that had switched on when the ship went into attack mode. “Commander, we can finish them in one salvo. If the enemy wants to fall on our sword, should we not oblige them?”

  Grumblings of concurrence came back from all around the bridge. Lomila wondered if any of these bloodlusting yIntaghpu’ understood the true gravity of the Organians’ threat, or if they had dismissed it as a bluff, the way General Kovor had.

  Marga stole a look at the Enterprise, then peered up at Lomila, his whole body shaking with excitement, like an inbred targ at feeding time. “What now, Commander?”

  “Return to your post.” She swiveled a few degrees toward the communications officer. “Kowgon, tell the Enterprise to send us its sensor protocols. Route them to Marga’s console.”

  “But Commander—what of the intercepted signal from the Romulans to the Enterprise?”

  “It could easily be a ruse by the Romulans, part of their plan to sabotage the conference.”

  “But if our enemies are working together—”

  “Then this is our chance to prove their treachery.” She swung her chair aft, toward the tactical console, where Marga stood. “Check their software. If it’s a trick, we vaporize them, then we crush their Romulan allies. But if these new protocols are real, I want to know.”

  Kowgon looked up from his station. “Sending the protocols to Marga now.”

  Everyone waited while Marga analyzed the files from the Enterprise. As he worked, Lomila kept her focus on the Starfleet vessel itself, wary for the first sign that its shields were going up or its weapons were charging. Even an attempt at retreat would be all the evidence of duplicity she would need to justify opening fire.

  It took nearly a minute before Marga finished. “The protocols check out, Commander.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “They work on the same principles we’ve been developing, but Starfleet’s intelligence is more complete. Also, the parts of these protocols that track the alien weapon Kirk blames for the disappearances match energy waveforms recorded by our research team on the planet Usilde, where a massive installation of unknown alien origin was recently discovered.”

  “Understood.” She returned her chair to its forward position. “Marga, release target locks on the Enterprise, then install
the new sensor protocols. Kowgon, inform Captain Kirk we stand ready to assist him in hunting our shared but presently unseen enemy.”

  K’mgar looked back again. “Commander, what of General Kovor?”

  “Kovor is gone,” Lomila declared. “This ship is now mine. Which means from this moment forward, you will obey my orders, or you will die. Do any of you want to test me?” No one answered her challenge. “That’s what I thought. Man your posts.”

  She looked at the Enterprise, shocked to think she was about to take her ship into battle beside it instead of against it. If the Organians have their way, this will be the shape of things to come. She shook her head. May Kahless forgive us all.

  Twenty-five

  Had he been raised a man of superstition rather than reason, Mirat would have called it a miracle. For the first time since Sadira brought the Transfer Key aboard the Velibor, she had succeeded in triggering it without crippling the bird-of-prey as a consequence.

  Power levels continued to fluctuate throughout the ship, of course. Garbled hash stuttered across every screen on the command deck, and damage reports filtered up from the lower decks, complaining of overloads in several of the auxiliary power relays. But all those glitches could be overlooked as long as the Velibor retained its cloak, helm control, and weapons array.

  Ensconced at the main console, Major Sadira looked pleased with herself. “Now we’ll see the end of these peace talks,” she said. “As soon as the Enterprise and the HoS’leth exchange fire, our mission will be accomplished, and we can set course for home.”

  The sensor readouts in the middle of the command console bore out Sadira’s prediction. The Klingon cruiser reversed its orientation and maneuvered to engage the Federation ship in orbit of Centaurus. Mirat noted that Sadira’s belief the Klingons would be more easily goaded into violent action had also proved correct—though, in hindsight, it seemed trite and obvious to the centurion. Starfleet’s way was to question first; the Klingon way was to kill.