Glass Empires

by Various

  “Not at all, Majesty,” she said as she stepped into an open and waiting turbolift car. He and his guards followed her in.

  The ride was brief. As soon as they stepped off, into another empty, sealed-off corridor, Spock subtly signaled his guards to fall back a few paces to give him privacy. “You are uncomfortable with the proclamation I made on Earth.”

  “I’ve said no such—”

  “Prevarication does not suit you,” he interrupted. “Speak plainly. I would know your thoughts.”

  Her apprehension was palpable. She eyed him with guarded suspicion. “Do I address the Emperor?”

  “You address your mentor, and your Academy sponsor.”

  That seemed to reassure her. Glancing over her shoulder to make certain the bodyguards would not overhear her, she whispered to Spock, “Undermining your own power was an error.”

  Her assertion intrigued him. “How so?”

  They turned a corner toward the transporter room. “The Empire and its ruler are one,” she said. “By diminishing yourself, you diminish the Empire. You invite conquest.”

  “Which is stronger, Saavik? One man, or ten men?” He let the analogy sink in for a few seconds, then, before she could answer, he continued. “An empire that derives its strength and authority from one person alone is weak, because its foundation is too narrow. One whose power derives from the mutual consent of the many rests upon a broad and unshakable base.”

  “Which is stronger, Your Majesty? A sheet of metal foil twenty meters square, or the blade of the knife that slices through it?” She paused a few meters shy of the transporter room door, and Spock and his guards halted with her. “Diffusing the power of the Empire throughout its people robs it of focus,” she added. “A quality that our enemies possess in abundance.”

  Spock considered her point for a few seconds. “When our enemies choose to conquer us,” he said, “they will succeed. And it will be their undoing.” At that, he stepped ahead of her and led the way into the transporter room. An engineer manned the transporter console, and another pair of Spock’s elite guards stood at attention, awaiting his arrival. He stepped onto the platform, accompanied by the two guards who had followed him through the corridors.

  Saavik stood between Spock and the transporter operator. Arching one eyebrow, she asked, “Majesty, do you really believe that conquering us would cause the fall of the Klingon Empire?”

  With perfect surety, he replied, “It is inevitable.”

  Then, with a nod, the order was given, and Spock and his guards vanished into the white haze of the transporter beam.

  Doctor Carol Marcus paced nervously inside the storage bay, awaiting the arrival of the most important VIP guest in the Empire. Don’t panic, she kept telling herself. It’s a good proposal, he’s a Vulcan, he’ll see that what you’re asking for is logical…. Don’t panic.

  The transporter effect shimmered into existence just a few meters away from her. She froze in place and watched three Vulcanoid shapes materialize, one in front and two behind. As the sparkling glow faded away, she found herself face-to-face with Emperor Spock, the supreme ruler of the Terran Empire.

  Though she had been taught as a child how to curtsey, she had never had any need to do so until this moment—and suddenly she found herself awkwardly wobbling over her own crossed feet. “Your Majesty,” she said while looking at the floor. “Welcome to Regula I.”

  Spock stepped toward her. “Thank you, Doctor Marcus.” He looked around at their immediate surroundings. “Based on your preliminary report, I presume that this is not the second phase of your project.”

  “Certainly not,” Marcus said, before adding belatedly, “Your Majesty.” The Emperor’s classically aloof Vulcan nature made it hard for her to tell if he was annoyed with her. She gestured toward the exit from this terminal chamber, which was located at the end of a long service corridor. “May I guide you through the rest of the facility?”

  “By all means,” he said.

  They left the storage bay, their footsteps echoing crisply in the empty space. Indicating the drab, gray surfaces of the corridor, she noted, “It took the Imperial Corps of Engineers nine months to excavate the preliminary facility. Though it was a costly and time-consuming project, it was essential to—”

  “I read your proposal for Project Genesis, Doctor,” he said as they neared a T-shaped intersection. “It is not necessary for you to reiterate its contents.”

  Concealing her embarrassment, she replied, “Of course not, Your Majesty. My apologies. Obviously, you just want to know whether phase two was a success.” At the intersection she turned to the right, then stopped and pivoted back to face Spock. “Well…you tell me.”

  The Emperor turned the corner and looked out upon Doctor Marcus’s handiwork. True to his Vulcan heritage and his personal reputation, he showed no sign of surprise at the verdant splendor of the Genesis Cave. Kilometers across, the roughly ovoid excavation was teeming with vegetation. Ferns and fronds carpeted the lower half of the space, which was thick with stands of jungle trees whose branches were heavy with fruit. Flowers of variegated colors dotted the periphery of the enclosure at seemingly random intervals. Mist hung in gauzy layers, refracting light from the artificial solar generators in an adjacent cave, on the far side from where Marcus and Spock now stood. Off to the right, in the distance, an enormous waterfall cascaded in snowy plumes over jagged rocks, its wholly natural appearance a testament to its meticulous engineering.

  “It’s self-contained and self-sustaining,” she said. “All except the solar generators, which will need to be refueled every sixty years.” She waited for a reaction from Spock, but none came. “In transforming this limited volume of inanimate matter, the Genesis Wave was completely successful,” she continued. “But to assess its full potential, we need to move on to phase three: a lifeless, geologically inactive planetoid. For that, we’ll need an increase in our funding, and the services of an Imperial starship, to help us seek out an appro—”

  “No,” Spock said.

  His answer caught her completely off guard. “Excuse me?”

  “Your request for funding and operational support is denied.”

  She folded her arms and reminded herself not to raise her voice. Though Spock had seemed to be a benign and compassionate sovereign so far, she remained keenly aware that he was still the Emperor—and that he could make her disappear with a single word. “May I ask why, Your Majesty?”

  “For the same reason that I terminated Operation Vanguard—what you propose is too dangerous. If I allow you to carry out your third-phase test, it will provoke an arms race and prematurely ignite our inevitable conflict with the Klingon Empire.”

  She knew he was right; the only reason she had dared to continue her work to this stage at all was because, unlike the opportunistic and belligerent Empress Sato III, Emperor Spock gave every indication of being a leader who would wield a power such as the Genesis Device wisely.

  “But think of the potential, Your Majesty,” she said, unable to give up on a project that had consumed the past fourteen years of her life. “We could transform dead worlds into new class-M planets. We wouldn’t have to compete with the Klingons for habitable worlds anymore.”

  “I am aware of its potential, Doctor, but the risks it carries are too great.” He turned his head and looked again at the cave. “How many people will this facility support?”

  Still reeling from the rejection, it took Marcus a moment to answer. “Indefinitely? Perhaps a hundred. Why?”

  “Because I want you to duplicate phase two of your project in a number of other sites throughout the Empire—sites whose locations will be known only to the two of us and to a handful of people who will be permanently attached to them.”

  She was confused now. “I thought you said you were terminating Project Genesis.”

  “I am,” Spock said. “But your work will not go to waste. I need it—and you—for an infinitely more important project.”

 
Alarmed but curious, she asked, “What kind of project?”

  Spock met her questioning stare with his dark, hypnotic gaze. He replied somberly, “The future of our civilization.”

  2286

  9

  A World in Transition

  F ingers brush across Lotok’s graying temple. Thoughts, half formed, whisper from mind to mind, conveyed with equal parts urgency and discretion. Contact is fleeting and subtle, all but imperceptible, its gift unremarked, its purpose unquestioned. The mind-meld ends, and he looks at his grandson, Kerok; now they are co-conspirators, and there is much work to do.

  Another dusky sunrise in ShiKahr, the cinnamon daybreak of dawn on Vulcan. Volkar rouses T’Len, his seven-year-old daughter, for school; their hands touch. He brushes a hair from her cheek. In a moment he shares the secret of a lifetime. Looking upon her sire with new eyes, T’Len understands.

  Spock is summoning the future, and we must be ready for it.

  A sullen storm front churns on the horizon, a dark stain on the crimson sky. Salok, a tenth-year Kolinahr adept, stands on a ledge near the peak of Mount Seleya. The crash of a far-off gong calls him to meditation. His walk across the bridge is long; his only companion is the wind, howling in minor chords, warm and rich with the clean smells of the deep desert.

  In the Halls of Ancient Thought, he is handed his ceremonial sash. As the high priest lowers it into Salok’s hands, they make contact. In between two more crashes of the gong, Salok sees the truth, shared by Emperor Spock with Sarek and passed on to a thousand more minds since: a vision of another universe, an incontrovertible mental image of a universe both like and unlike his own. The knowledge comes with a price: a call to arms.

  Salok is ready.

  Rebellion. It’s an idea, a concept, a meme.

  Viruslike, it travels and seeks receptive hosts, vessels who will carry it, nurture it, spread it.

  Freedom. It is contagious in its simplicity, incendiary in its potential, complicated and inherently contradictory. Logic demands it; without the freedom to explore new thoughts and new ideas, knowledge cannot advance; without intellectual freedom, civilization stagnates. Progress halts. Hope dies.

  It is only the germ of an idea. But it is spreading.

  L’Haan is a defender of the peace, a law enforcement officer, and until three days ago she had held no other loyalty than to the Empire. Then the Emperor’s vision of the future touched her mind. Today she realizes the Empire is doomed, and that Emperor Spock’s dangerous vision is the way of tomorrow.

  Her first duty now is to the people of Vulcan—and to the future. Time is short, and there are many minds to reach. Already she has encountered several who are already part of the movement. It is reassuring to know who her allies are, but theirs is an evangelical cause. Success will be measured not in the depth of their personal commitment but in their ability to recruit others. And so she continues to search, to seek out those individuals who seem most likely to sympathize with Spock’s plan for the future.

  She sees the man she has been looking for. His name is V’Nem. He is a professor at the Vulcan Science Academy, known for being slightly unorthodox. Statistically speaking, he is likely to be a receptive candidate for The Touch.

  L’Haan concocts an excuse to detain him for just a moment. She demands to see what he has hidden in the folds of his loose desert robe. Predictably, he resists, citing the new imperial guarantees against warrantless search and seizure. It’s a flimsy pretext for her to accuse him of resisting arrest, but it will do. She grabs his wrist for only a moment, long enough to reach out and try to make contact with his thoughts, to tell him to remain calm, that he is in no danger—

  He is a Romulan. An infiltrator. A spy.

  V’Nem reaches for a concealed weapon.

  L’Haan attacks, a knifing blow of her stiffened hand against V’Nem’s neck, which snaps instantly. His head lolls toward the ground, a limp and heavy mass with dull eyes. She releases his wrist and lets his body fall into the street.

  A crowd gathers. There will be an inquiry, but even after Spock’s legal reforms she still has the power of authority, the protection of being an officer of the law. In short order she will be vindicated, even applauded for exposing and disposing of a Romulan agent. The attention this will bring her will prevent her from spreading Spock’s message for a few weeks, or longer.

  This was a mistake of youthful inexperience, she knew. In the future, I must be more circumspect in my actions.

  T’Meri slips out of her dormitory at the Vulcan Science Academy and steals away into the dark predawn hours. Halfway across the city, the young Vulcan woman finds her way to an unmarked door below street level. She does not knock; instead she scrapes her boot against the base of the door for a few seconds, then stands where she knows the security camera can see her clearly. The rust-mottled portal opens with fluid ease and surprisingly little noise. She slips inside, and the door is shut quickly after her.

  T’Prynn is waiting for her. The older Vulcan woman is ex-Starfleet and, from what few fleeting personal glimpses T’Meri has had of T’Prynn’s mind, privy to many terrible secrets. But the one that she has shared most vividly with T’Meri is the one she received, through a long chain of psychic transfer, of Emperor Spock’s mind-meld with the man from the alternate universe. She has imparted the vision to T’Meri so that she can seek out others sympathetic to Spock’s aims and pass it along to them, with the same directive. T’Meri has done exactly that.

  She reaches up toward T’Prynn’s face and gently rests her fingertips against the woman’s smooth, pale skin. In turn, T’Prynn’s fingers press delicately upon the side of T’Meri’s bronze-hued face. Their minds touch, and T’Meri shows T’Prynn all the minds to whom she has conveyed Spock’s message. T’Prynn is pleased—then she breaks the psychic link.

  T’Meri opens her eyes and finds her face and T’Prynn’s only a few centimeters apart. Their lips are parted and trembling with anticipation. The sensations are a mystery to T’Meri, whose next Pon farr is still four years away—until she realizes that T’Prynn is hiding the fires of her own desire, and that some of that ardor has been transferred in the mind-meld.

  The urge to kiss the older woman is overpowering, and as T’Meri searches her thoughts, she realizes that, in fact, T’Prynn desires her. Burns for her.

  She feels the heat of T’Prynn’s breath inside her mouth, mingling with her own, but all she can think about is the fact that, despite Governor Sarek’s attempts at liberal social reforms, Vulcan’s laws—preserved for thousands of years by the Council of Elders at Mount Seleya—forbid her and T’Prynn from succumbing to their true natures.

  T’Prynn’s lips graze T’Meri’s.

  Surrendering to the swell of passion lingering from their mind-meld, T’Meri returns T’Prynn’s kiss and gives herself over to a woman more than three times her age. T’Prynn is voracious in her desire, primal in her way of touching, almost savage in the way she removes T’Meri’s garments.

  We are already conspiring to help destroy the Empire, T’Meri rationalizes between desperate, fumbling gropes as T’Prynn pulls her toward a bed. We are already criminals.

  2288

  10

  Men of Long Knives

  E very warrior in the Great Hall could smell the scent of blood. The Terran Empire was starting to flounder, its Emperor Spock shedding power and control the way a gelded targ sheds fur. At long last, the greatest enemy of the Klingon Empire was faltering; it was time to strike.

  All that remained now was to decide who would strike, with what forces, where, when, and how. This debate, unfortunately, was dragging on late into the night, and Councillor Gorkon was growing weary of the bickering. Regent Sturka—the latest warrior to hold the throne for Kahless, He Who Shall Return—looked haggard and sullen as Councillors Duras and Indizar argued while circling each other inside the small pool of harsh light in the middle of the Council chamber.

  “You Imperial Intelligence types are all the
same,” Duras said with a sneer. “Infiltrate the Terrans, sabotage them, conquer them by degrees.” Lifting his voice to an aggrieved bellow, he added, “Where’s the glory in that?”

  Keeping one hand on her d’k tahg, Indizar replied with a voice like the low growl of a Kryonian tiger. “It’s smarter than your way, Duras. You’d plunge us headlong into full-scale war with the largest fleet in known space. We might emerge victorious, but at what cost? Our fleet would be savaged, our borders weakened. The Romulans would overrun us the moment we finished off the Terrans…. Of course, maybe that’s your real plan, isn’t it,Duras?”

  Duras’s eyes were wide with fury. “You dare call me a traitor?” His hand went for his own d’k tahg—

  Sharp, echoing cracks. One, two, three. Everyone looked at Sturka, who ceased smashing the steel-clad tip of his staff on the stone floor. “Both of you get out of the circle,” he commanded Indizar and Duras. Then, to the others, he said, “I want to hear realistic strategies. Honest assessments.” He looked at Gorkon, who had served for more than twenty years as Sturka’s most trusted adviser, and who had thwarted an attempt by the late Councillor Kesh to seize the throne for himself. “Have Spock’s reforms weakened the Terrans’ defenses,” Sturka asked, “or merely damaged his own political security?”

  Stepping out of the crowd into the heat and glare of the circle, Gorkon gripped the edges of his black leather stole, which rested over a studded, red leather chimere; worn together, the two ceremonial vestments marked him unmistakably as the second-highest-ranking individual in the chamber. “The Terran Empire,” he began in a stately tone, “is still far too strong for us to risk a direct military engagement.” Before the rising murmur of grumbles got out of control, Gorkon reasserted his control over the discussion. “However, the reforms instituted by their current sovereign hold the promise of future opportunities.” He began a slow walk along the edge of the circle of light, using his time to size up the commitment of both his rivals and his allies on the Council. “Emperor Spock has made significant reductions in military spending, with many deep cuts in the field of weapons research and development.” He paused as he returned the steely glare of Duras, then moved on. “This will give us a chance to finally take the lead in our long arms race, after more than six decades of lagging behind the Terrans. This opportunity must not be squandered—it might never come again.”