Glass Empires

by Various

  “When the Klingon-Cardassian invasion comes,” Spock said, “it will succeed, and we will be conquered…. But when the war is long over, Memory Omega will be the seed from which our republic will be reborn, rising from the ashes of empire.” He got up, moved to a cabinet along one wall, and opened it. From inside he took a large black case with a handle. “Inside this case are data cards containing the final entries for the database.” He handed it to her. “Guard them well.”

  The case was heavy enough that, as she took it from Spock, its weight wrenched her shoulder. Straightening her posture, she asked, “What’s on them?”

  “The truth,” Spock said. After a pause, he added, “The transporter room is standing by to beam you back to your ship. You should return before your absence is noted.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” she said.

  He lifted his right hand and spread his fingers in the traditional Vulcan salute. “Live long and prosper, Doctor Marcus.”

  Remembering the proper response, she lifted her own right hand and copied the finger positions as best she could. “Peace and long life, Your Majesty.” They lowered their hands, and Marcus walked toward the door. As the portal opened ahead of her, she stopped and looked back. “I just realized,” she said, “I never thanked you for killing Jim Kirk…. I was always afraid of what he would’ve done if he’d known about David.”

  “You were wise to fear him,” Spock said, sending a chill through her. “He would have killed you both.”

  The door buzzer sounded and Spock bid his visitor enter.

  He turned at the sound of the opening door. Captain Saavik walked in and saluted him as the door closed behind her. “Doctor Marcus has been beamed back to her ship, Your Majesty.”

  “Well done, Captain.” Now that he had a moment to actually look at her, he was pleased to see that commanding a starship flattered her. The hesitation of her youthful self was gone, the uncertainty of her Academy days supplanted by conviction and discipline. It would be a shame to make her give it up, but it was time for her to embrace a larger destiny. “Two days after we reach Earth,” he said, “I will convene a special joint session of the Legislature, to make a statement about the results of the Khitomer Conference. But before I do so, you will resign from Starfleet and return to Vulcan.”

  Saavik’s stoic countenance betrayed no reaction. “Permission to speak freely, Majesty?”

  “Granted.”

  “Is there a connection between the timing of your address and your request for my resignation?”

  Spock nodded. “There is. When my declaration is complete, nothing will be the same. It would be best if you were away by then, traveling under an alias.”

  For a few moments, she broke eye contact with him and processed what he had said. When her eyes turned back to him, they carried the gleam of cognition. “Then this is to be the moment you spoke of so long ago?”

  “It is,” he said.

  His answer seemed to trouble her. “This is far more abrupt than I had imagined it would be, Majesty. Unrest, even rebellion might follow, and our enemies will—”

  “I am aware of the risks,” Spock said.

  Small motions and expressions—a twitch near the creases of her right eye, the subtle curling of her fingers into the first inkling of a fist—conveyed her profound anxiety. “This is not a time to deprive yourself of allies, Your Majesty.”

  “Nor am I doing any such thing,” Spock countered. “I am, however, redeploying my allies to those locations where they can serve me best. And it is time for you to return to Vulcan.”

  The muscles of her face relaxed, and her fingers gave up their slow curl. Resignation brought her singularity of focus and tranquility of mind. “Then this is the end,” she said.

  “And the beginning,” Spock confirmed.

  Eyes downcast, Saavik said, “As you command, Majesty. I will resign.” Then she met his gaze with her own steely look. “But before I do, I have one final duty to perform.”

  Orders filled the air, loud, crisp, and fierce. “Single file, left face! Atten—tion! Hai!” The emperor’s elite guards snapped into formation, pivoted left on their heels, and stiffened to attention, eyes front.

  In the middle of the line, Valeris kept her stare level and unblinking. The captain of the guard walked past her, reviewing the line before Emperor Spock and Empress Marlena exited the turbolift from the imperial residence. Moments from now, the guards would escort them on the short walk to the Forum Hall, where the Legislature awaited the Emperor’s arrival. A live, real-time subspace transmission had already begun, to share with the entire population of the Empire what Spock’s advisers had promised would be a “momentous announcement.”

  I must remain calm. Valeris focused on the well-rehearsed details of her mission. This was her appointed hour to strike. No strategy was required here, only commitment. Her armor, loaded with ultritium, was fully primed and ready to be detonated. I will die, but this failed political experiment will end, and a stronger empire will be born. She told herself that this was a logical exchange—her life for the continued safety of the Empire, under the more competent guidance of the military. Years of preparation had brought her to this threshold moment. One press of a button and her mission would be complete. The action would be simple; her readiness to act would be all.

  One final check. She reached down to confirm that the detonator, disguised as a communicator, was secure on her hip.

  It was missing.

  The first flutter of alarm had barely registered in her mind when she felt a pair of blades stab up, under the layered plates of her lorica segmentata, and slice deep into her torso from both sides. Her cry of pain caught in her throat, which rapidly fountained with dark green blood.

  To either side of her, none of the other guards moved to her aid. Not one of them even looked at Valeris as her knees buckled and delivered her rudely onto the floor. Torov, the captain of the guard, watched her crumple to the ground…then he turned his back on her.

  Lying on the cold marble slabs, surrounded by her own lifeblood, Valeris watched as her killer stepped through the gap in the line where she herself had stood seconds earlier.

  Captain Saavik towered above Valeris, the bloody daggers still in her hands. She squatted beside Valeris and spoke in a husky whisper, as though they were intimates exchanging secrets. “Your accomplice General Quiniven was exposed two months ago,” Saavik said. Her dark eyes burned momentarily with venomous hatred. “Several weeks in a Klingon mind-sifter exposed the rest of your conspirators. So in case you think that Admirals Cartwright, Bennett, or Morrow will finish your grand plan for you, they will not. Nor will Colonel West, nor Commodore Vosrok, nor Admiral zh’Ferro.”

  Valeris’s head lolled toward the floor. Saavik slipped the flat of one of her blades under Valeris’s chin and gently turned the expiring woman’s face so that they made eye contact again. Valeris saw Saavik’s other dagger, held high, ready to deliver the coup de grâce. The turbolift doors opened at the end of the hallway, and Emperor Spock and Empress Marlena emerged.

  “One man is about to summon the future,” Saavik told Valeris. “But you will not live to see it.” Saavik’s dagger struck, sharp, cold, and deadly, but for Valeris the fatal blow was not nearly so terrible as the sting of her own failure.

  Spock and Marlena paused together at the stairs to the podium. She took his hand. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “It is time,” he said. “We cannot afford to wait.”

  Her trembling frown concealed her swell of emotions. “Then let it be done,” she said, and she released his hand.

  Alone, Spock climbed the stairs and moved to the lectern, awash in the percussive roar of applause, all of it from the floor of the Common Forum. The sound rebounded from the gilt dome of the ceiling, beneath which the ring of balconies were filled with scowling senators and governors of grim bearing. The Emperor rested his hands on the lectern’s edges and waited. Moments later, the applause diminished, then dissi
pated like a summer rainstorm coming to a sudden end.

  “Members of the Legislature,” Spock began, enunciating with precision. “Distinguished Governors of the Empire. Honored guests. Please be seated.” His standing audience sat down in a rustle of movement. When they had settled, he continued. “I have convened this joint session to issue an imperial proclamation with no precedent. In recent years, I have instituted reforms of a radical nature, altering the structure of our government and shifting the tenor of our domestic and foreign policies.

  “Today shall mark another such change.”

  A worried murmur coursed through the thousands of people gathered in the Common Forum. Spock waited for the susurrus to abate before he pressed ahead. Just as he had done when making his declaration of citizens’ freedoms nine years earlier, he had ordered this address to be transmitted on a live subspace channel to every world in the Empire and to its foreign neighbors. Hundreds of billions of people were about to witness the boldest, and last, reforms of Spock’s imperial reign.

  “Since the hour of its inception, our empire has been predicated on tyranny. Territory and resources have been seized by force of arms, dissent crushed and made criminal, loyalty secured through intimidation.

  “The Terran Empire has expended as much blood and treasure on suppressing its own people as it has on defending itself from foreign powers. This ruthless policing of our own citizens is one factor in our cultural stagnation; another is that we can grow only as quickly as we can conquer.

  “War is an inefficient means to an end. It leaves ruin in its wake, resources expended for naught, lives taken and given in vain. It is the most egregious form of waste known to sentient beings, and, like all waste, it is illogical. For more than a century, preemptive war has been the chief instrument of foreign and domestic policy for this empire.

  “No longer. On behalf of the Empire, I renounce it.”

  The hubbub of alarm was stronger now, from the Forum members as well as the senators. Their reaction was just as Spock had expected; he had known from the outset that this moment would terrify them, but that could not be helped. And now that he had begun, there was no longer any choice but to push on to the inevitable end.

  “A nation founded on waste and injustice cannot endure,” he said with force, quieting the rumbles of the Legislature. “For several decades, the leaders of Vulcan have known that our empire is on a path to its own demise. Habitable worlds and energy reserves are both finite; we will exhaust our resources and collapse into civil war within two hundred fifteen years—unless we change the course of our civilization.”

  Spock hesitated before making his next statement. To make such a revelation as this to the galaxy at large was a gamble, one whose outcome had proved too complex to predict. He chose to let the truth speak for itself. “During my service in Starfleet, I met four people from another, parallel universe—one much like our own, and very different. Those four people were that universe’s versions of my own captain and crewmates, transposed across the dimensional barrier by a transporter accident.

  “In returning them to their own universe and recovering my crewmates, I was afforded a glimpse of their reality. They had come from a federation of planets, a coalition of worlds bound together by mutual consent. These worlds and peoples shared their resources and knowledge willingly, defended each other mutually, and valued life and freedom more than power. And they prospered for it. Harmony had brought them stability. Peace had made possible the eradication of hunger and poverty.

  “Their way of life is peaceful. Sustainable. Logical.”

  Stunned, ostensibly horrified silence filled the Forum Hall. Determined to seize the moment, Spock continued. “The path that I have chosen for our future is modeled on that which I have seen succeed beyond even our most optimistic projections. Despotism is a path to self-destruction. Our best hope for survival and prosperity lies in reforming our civilization as a representative republic, with a system of checks and balances between strongly constrained and coequal branches of government, and a charter of inalienable rights and freedoms that guarantees the sovereignty of the citizen over the state.

  “As of today, I issue my final decrees as Emperor: I revoke the authority of the planetary governors and command that they be replaced by elected presidents.” He touched a single key on his lectern. “Second, I have just transmitted to every member of the Forum and Senate a proposed charter for this new political entity. It is now the duty of the Legislature to review this document, revise it, ratify it, and submit it to the head of state for enactment.

  “My third and final decree: The Terran Empire is hereby dissolved, and the Terran Republic is established. I shall assume the role of Consul for a period of not more than four years, after which I shall be required to stand for reelection, like any member of the Legislature.

  “Imperial fiat is hereby replaced by a charter of law, subject to legislative review and amendment.

  “The Empire is over. Former governors, I thank you for your past service and discharge you. Distinguished members of the Forum and the Senate, when you are ready to discuss the charter proposal, I will be at your service. Until then, I pledge myself to defending the rights and freedoms of the citizens of the Terran Republic, whom I now serve. Thank you, and farewell.”

  Raging howls of protest wailed in the cavernous hall as Consul Spock walked away from the lectern, descended the stairs, and joined his wife for the rapid retreat back to the turbolift.

  Even amid the din of shouting voices, Spock distinctly heard the epithets and slurs aimed in his direction. Change always frightened humans, he knew, and he had just upended their entire civilization. Even though he was no longer an emperor, his elite guards swiftly moved into a protective formation around him and Marlena and escorted them from the Forum at a brisk step. Without stopping to answer questions from the many furious Starfleet officers in the hallway, Spock and Marlena jogged into the turbolift. Marlena sighed with relief as the doors slid shut and they were once more cocooned in silence.

  “It’s really done,” she said, sounding both amazed and terrified. “You did it…. The Empire’s gone.”

  For once, Spock was at a loss for words. His emotional control almost faltered as he contemplated the enormity of what he had just done, and how irrevocable it was—or more precisely, how irrevocable it soon would be.

  The doors of the turbolift opened, and he walked back into the formerly imperial, now consular residence. Marlena remained close behind him as he moved resolutely through the opulent foyer and parlor to the private antechamber where he kept the Tantalus field device. Incorrectly anticipating his intentions, she bounded ahead of him and keyed in the sequence to open its concealing panel, which lifted away to reveal the device’s tarnished but still perfectly functional interface.

  She spoke quickly, her voice pitched with excitement. “We’ll have to move quickly, there won’t be much time. I’d suggest getting rid of Senator ch’Neth before he—”

  “Marlena,” Spock interrupted, drawing a small hand phaser from beneath his robe. “Step away from the device.”

  Horror and panic made her look crazed, feral. She spread her arms, shielded the device with her body. “No,” she protested. “Spock, you can’t! We need it. Without it, we can’t defend ourselves. All the work, everything we fought for—it won’t mean anything without the power to enforce it. Think about what you’re doing, for God’s sake!”

  “I have thought about nothing else for the past twenty-six years,” Spock said. “Moments ago, I forced our government to renounce terror and preemptive violence as instruments of state-craft; I must now relinquish them as tools of politics.” He stepped closer to her, keeping the phaser leveled at her trembling body. “This device must never fall into the hands of another tyrant, Marlena. It has served our purposes, but it is time to let it go…. Step out of the way.”

  Marlena’s resolve weakened, then it collapsed. Her arms fell limp at her sides, and she stepped clear and moved
behind Spock. He took careful aim and set his phaser to maximum power. A single, prolonged burst of phaser energy vaporized the interface of the Tantalus field device, melted its internal components, and finally reduced its mysterious, shielded core to a puddle of bubbling slag and acrid, blue-white smoke.

  The deadliest implement of arbitrary power Spock had ever known was gone, destroyed with the secrets of its creation.

  This, he knew, was the beginning of the end.

  2295

  14

  In the Hour of Broken Dreams

  C onsul Spock and Marlena Moreau stood together on the floor of the Common Forum and awaited their executioners.

  They faced each other, the tips of the first two fingers of their right hands pressed solemnly together, a sign of their bond of affection. Even from this slight union, Spock was able to touch Marlena’s troubled thoughts; he counseled her to remain calm, to be at peace with the end that was coming for them both.

  Deep rumbles shook the floor under their feet, and a sound like rolling thunder filled the palace-turned-people’s-hall that surrounded them.

  Energy weapons screeched somewhere outside.

  He felt her love and quiet admiration for him as she looked up into his eyes. “It was nice while it lasted,” she said.

  Spock lifted his eyebrows, a sly admission of bemusement. “I presume you are referring to the Republic.”

  “All of it,” she said. “The Republic, your reforms…us.” She paused as the clacks of marching boots echoed louder outside the doors. “It was all worth it,” she continued. “Even if it couldn’t last, I’m glad I lived to see it.”

  “My only regret is that its tenure had to be so brief,” he said. “I am curious to know how this great experiment might have fared on a longer time scale.”