by David Mack
On the other side of Bacco’s desk, Piñiero looked up with a droll countenance. “That didn’t take long,” she said.
“Send her in, Sivak,” Bacco said.
The intercom switched off, the southern door opened, and Ambassador Tezrene swept into the room, her scorpionlike body wrapped in a golden shroud of silk that was taut from the high-pressure, searing-hot gases it contained.
Agents Wexler and Kistler followed close behind her, and two more protection agents, Lovak and de Maurnier, entered through the office’s other door. All of them kept their eyes on the agitated Tholian diplomat, who was following a direct path toward Bacco. The president stood and held her ground.
“You’ll regret this,” Tezrene said through her vocoder, which barely muffled the metallic shrieks it was translating.
Bacco replied with transparently insincere concern, “Is something wrong, Your Excellency?”
First came a string of angry scrapes and clicks the vocoder couldn’t parse, then Tezrene said, “Your backroom deals with the Gorn and the Cardassians were expected. But sending the Ferengi to do your dirty work—you disgust us.”
“Forgive me, Madam Ambassador,” Bacco said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There was nothing secretive about my meetings with Ambassadors Zogozin and Garak. As for the Ferengi, they’re a sovereign power who can do as they wish.”
A flurry of furious clicks and scrapes telegraphed Tezrene’s ire. “Using them to marginalize us, contain us … you have overstepped your bounds.”
Piñiero leaned forward to join in the conversation. “Excuse me, Madam President. I think the ambassador might be referring to the Ferengi’s recruitment of Breen and Orion mercenaries to serve as their proxies on the expeditionary force.”
“Oh, I see,” said Bacco, feigning sudden understanding. Then she changed tack. “No, I don’t see, actually. Why would the Tholian Assembly take offense at that, Madam Ambassador? You weren’t planning to use those same mercenary forces to launch proxy attacks on our territory, were you?”
“Our concern was merely for the defense of our borders from the Borg,” Tezrene said. “You’ve deprived us of our allies when we need them most.”
It took real effort for Bacco not to laugh with contempt. “Do you really think the Breen would hold the line for you against the Borg?” she asked. “If the Collective comes for you, who do you plan on asking for help? The Orions? The Tzenkethi? Do either of them have a history of benign foreign intervention that I’ve just never heard of?”
A threatening twitch jerked Tezrene’s stinger-tipped tail to and fro, lending her seething a mesmerizing quality. “The Tholian Assembly does not need the Federation’s help.”
“Maybe not,” Bacco said. “But you should know that Starfleet won’t sit by and let the Borg attack Tholian worlds. If your people send distress signals, we will answer.”
“Your gestures change nothing,” Tezrene said. “Hollow promises do not erase the sins of the past. We remember the crimes of the Taurus Reach.”
Bacco turned her palms upward and spread her arms, hoping that the gesture would not be misunderstood or ignored by the Tholian diplomat. “Madam Ambassador, history is offering us a unique opportunity. We’re faced with a common enemy, a shared need. This is a chance to put aside old hatreds.”
“Not for us,” Tezrene said.
Without another word, the Tholian ambassador turned and stalked away, flanked by all four of the presidential security agents. Bacco and Piñiero watched Tezrene exit. The last agent out of the room was Wexler, who nodded to Bacco as he shut the door behind him.
“Well,” Piñiero said. “That went better than I expected it to. Now all we have to do is keep the ships of two warring Romulan factions from shooting at each other, find a way to reimburse the Ferengi Alliance for all the privateers they hired, and figure out how to make the Klingons give back eight systems they took from the Gorn over a century ago.”
Bacco relaxed into her chair. “Let Safranski squeeze concessions from the Klingons,” she said. “As for paying the Ferengi, get Offenhouse up here. It’s about time he started earning his keep as secretary of commerce.” She picked up her black, sweet coffee and enjoyed a long sip.
Piñiero asked, “What about the rival Romulan fleets meeting at the Azure Nebula?”
“That’s Picard’s problem, now,” Bacco said. “He asked for everyone, and he’s got ’em. The next move is his.”
1574
12
A lifetime of night surrendered to the day. The icy sterility of the starry reaches of space faded from view as the city of Axion descended into the pale corona of a planet’s upper atmosphere.
Veronica Fletcher stood at the edge of the city and peeked over its rocky rim, at the lush green orb flattening beneath her. Fiery wisps danced past the city-ship’s invisible sphere of protection, and a great roar, like that of an engine, chased away all the stray thoughts that had been lingering in the forgotten tenements of her mind.
Next to her, Erika Hernandez perched on the corner of the precipice and watched the Caeliar’s new world rising to meet them. Fletcher recalled how different she and Hernandez had looked in their youth—Fletcher had been pale and golden-haired, in contrast to Hernandez’s black hair and olive complexion. Now they looked all but identical: pale, snow-maned, withered, and ravaged by time and gravity. Their stooped, fragile bodies were both clothed in silvery-gray wraps that reminded her of both togas and saris. Even their shoes had been replaced by flexible, synthetic-fiber slippers made by their captors.
She had never forgotten. Not even now, watching mountains of clouds race past into a blue sky, did she forget where she was, how she’d come to be there, and who was responsible. All the beauties of creation wouldn’t have been enough to make her forget that she was a prisoner, a dying bird in a gilded cage.
The city broke through the bottom layer of cloud cover, and the details of a majestic landscape were revealed below them. Rugged, reddish-brown cliffs flanked abyssal canyons, and in the distance lay a range of charcoal-hued mountains topped with sun-splashed snowcaps. In the middle distance, a verdant landscape of rolling hills and broad plains was cut by wide rivers.
Hernandez sounded awed. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
“It’s everything I’d hoped it would be,” Fletcher replied in her ancient rasp of a voice.
A knifing jab of pain pushed between her ribs, and she fought for breath as a fierce pressure clamped around her heart. Not here, she commanded her failing body. Not yet. I won’t die in this damned city. Slowly, the pain faded.
The horizon became all but level as the city-ship of Axion settled into a stable, hovering position above the planet’s surface. Then there was a subtle change in the air around them. A soft hush of moving atmosphere. The natural perfumes of flowers and green plants and living things. Thousands of tiny olfactory details came to Fletcher, like whispers half heard.
She became aware of warmth on her skin, and she looked up at the yellowish-orange sun high overhead. It was the first time she had felt natural solar radiation in more than fifty years. “The Caeliar must have turned off the shields,” she said.
On the surface, a herd of graceful-looking animals gamboled across the open plains and stopped every few paces to graze on grass and flowers.
Hernandez stretched her arms over her head and smiled. “It’s like paradise,” she said.
An electric tingle on the back of Fletcher’s neck served as a herald of Inyx’s arrival. She turned, regarded him sourly, and said, “Yes, it’s paradise. Complete with an apple salesman.”
Inyx, who looked exactly as he had when Fletcher and the Columbia’s landing party had first come to this city decades earlier, ignored her comment and bowed to Hernandez. “We have completed the transit,” he said as he straightened. “Thanks in no small part to your efforts, Erika.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Hernandez said. “But it was only possible because of everything you’ve taught me.”
; Watching her captain curry favor with the enemy made Fletcher feel ill. Or homicidal. Sometimes both simultaneously. “I hate to break up your mutual admiration society,” she said, “but can Erika and I make a visit to the surface? Now?”
The looming Caeliar scientist extended his arm, waved the three cilia at its end, and conjured a large-diameter, razor-thin, levitating disk of quicksilver. He stepped up onto it and gestured for Fletcher and Hernandez to join him. “It would be my pleasure to bring you there.”
“Thanks,” Fletcher said, forcing her arthritic knees to bend and propel her aching body up the short step onto the disk. Beside her, Hernandez was having almost as much difficulty mounting the transportation platform. It took several seconds, but they soon were safely in its center.
Hernandez nodded. “Let’s go.”
The forward motion was slower and gentler than it once had been. Fletcher presumed that Inyx must have realized how frail his passengers were and adjusted his control of the disk to a more appropriate velocity. They drifted away from the city in a slow turn, taking in the panorama of pristine wilderness that surrounded them. In a pleasant change from past rides on the circular platforms, gentle winds teased Fletcher’s face, tossed her hair above and behind her head, and fluttered her clothes. It felt good, like a memory of freedom.
She pointed toward a low rise in the smooth plain, a knoll graced by a stand of three thick-trunked trees topped by proud green crowns of leaves. “There,” she said. “Set us down on top of that hill, will you?”
“As you wish,” Inyx said, altering the disk’s path.
Less than a minute later, the disk touched down without any vibration of contact on the grassy hilltop and dissolved like a mirage. Fletcher felt the pliant sensation of grass bending under her feet, the cool touch of a gentle breeze scented with flowers and warm earth. She reached over and took Hernandez’s hand. “Come with me,” she said, leading Hernandez forward. Looking back at Inyx, she added, “You stay here.”
He responded with an obedient nod.
Fletcher and Hernandez moved away from him in small, careful steps. Their slow progress gave Fletcher time to savor all the small details of this serene spot. The lilting of birdsong in the boughs above. A bright rhythm of sawing insect noise. The rustling of leaves, whose gentle dance in the wind dappled the sunlight falling between the three mighty trees.
When they reached the center of the trees’ irregular, triangular formation, Fletcher stopped. She breathed in the air, nodded in confirmation to herself, and permitted herself a bittersweet smile. “This’ll do,” she said.
“For what?” asked Hernandez.
“My grave,” Fletcher said. “When I die, this is where I want to be buried.”
* * *
Back in the embrace of a planet, it became easier for Hernandez to measure time. Sunrises and sunsets were novelties again. Each new dawn was another mark on Hernandez’s calendar, and she noted the passage of weeks, and then months.
The Caeliar had wasted no time admiring the scenery. Instead, they’d set to work acclimating to their new home. Soil and plant seeds had been harvested from the planet’s surface, to restore the landscaped sections of Axion that had been destroyed in its hasty flight from Erigol. Trees, shrubbery, and flowers were transplanted; water was taken from the rivers to replenish the city’s many fountains and artificial waterfalls.
Edrin, the quiet and modest chief architect of the Caeliar, had supervised the design and construction of a residence for Hernandez and Fletcher. It was a spacious home of cedar-like wood and rough-hewn gray stone, with an open floor plan. Broad windows on its walls and strategically placed slanted skylights set in its sloped roof filled its common areas with large amounts of natural illumination throughout the day.
In the evenings, voice-activated lights concealed in the walls lent a warm glow to the two women’s shared living space. Though neither of them had seen any sign of plumbing while the house was being constructed, it nonetheless featured clean hot-and-cold running water from a variety of locations, including both of their bathrooms and the kitchen.
Because neither of them had much interest in or energy for cooking, Edrin had provided them with a food synthesizer. As Hernandez had come to expect living in Axion, its entire menu consisted of vegetables and nondairy vegetarian dishes. Only after many experimental mishaps had Hernandez been able to help the Caeliar devise a leavening agent for bread that didn’t contain eggs or anything patterned on them. The result was less than successful, but it was at least recognizable as bread, and it had opened the door to making noodles and other pasta, providing a much-needed respite from the Caeliar’s endless variations of ratatouille.
In the back of the house there was a brick patio and a wading pool. Though their home had been built on a hill with a commanding view of the surrounding landscape, the vista from the back of the house, facing west, was the only one not obstructed by the looming mass of Axion close overhead. That one fact made the western view Fletcher’s favorite. Hernandez found it harder to enjoy, however, because it looked out on the adjacent hilltop, where three trees stood their silent vigil over Fletcher’s self-selected grave site. It was a daily reminder for Hernandez of an inevitable truth she didn’t want to face.
Put it from your mind, she told herself. Focus on each day as it comes. Hernandez regretted not having been able to find a hobby during her long decades on Axion, because now that the Caeliar had settled upon this world as New Erigol, she no longer had a job to perform in the observatory. As dark and as imposing as the Star Chamber had seemed to her, now that it was in her past, there was a hole in her life.
It was about an hour past dawn. Hernandez set two plates of toast with jam and fresh fruit on the patio dining table, across from each other. Moving in slow, measured steps, she made her way back to the kitchen and retrieved a tray on which sat a pot of tea, a dish of sugar, and two delicate cups. As she carried it past Fletcher’s bedroom door on her way out to the patio, she called out in a brittle voice she still couldn’t believe was really hers, “Breakfast is ready.”
A few minutes later, after she’d spread the jam on her toast and stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea, she looked up and wondered what was keeping Fletcher.
Nagging concern impelled her from her seat and back into the house. Let me be worrying over nothing, she prayed to no one. Let her just be sleeping in, or deaf under a hot shower.
She pushed open the door to Fletcher’s bedroom suite. In a timid voice, she called out, “Ronnie?”
Fletcher lay supine in her bed, one arm dangling half off the side. She lolled her head and stared blankly in Hernandez’s direction. Though her mouth moved, no sound issued from her throat, only hollow gasps.
Hernandez wanted to run to her friend, but panic rooted her feet to the floor. It took all her strength to draw a breath and make a desperate cry for help: “Inyx!”
* * *
Fletcher’s end was close, closer than Hernandez had thought only a few minutes earlier. Sprawled on a quicksilver disk, cradling her friend in her lap, it was all Hernandez could do to stay focused on the details of the moment. The cool kiss of the wind. The fragile, parchmentlike quality of Fletcher’s skin, and the golden radiance of the morning shining on this hideous moment.
“We’re almost there,” Inyx said, looking back and down at them. “Just a few seconds more.”
Looking around in confusion, Hernandez saw that Axion was far behind them, and slipping farther into the distance with each moment the disk spent in flight. Nodding toward the city-ship, Hernandez shouted, “Inyx, we’re going the wrong way!”
“No,” he said. “We’re not.”
Then she looked past him, ahead of the disk, and saw the three trees on the hill directly ahead. “Inyx,” she demanded as they passed under the trees’ branches, “what are you doing?”
“Exactly what Veronica asked me to do,” he said. The disk touched down with preternatural grace and seemed to soak into the dark, rich ea
rth. Beside the two women was a freshly excavated grave with near-perfect corners and a neatly piled mound of dirt waiting to be returned whence it came.
Hernandez shook her head, denying what was right in front of her. “No, Inyx. You can’t just let her die! There has to be something you can do!”
“There are many things we can do,” Inyx said. “But it’s Veronica’s wish that we do nothing.”
With a weak grip, Fletcher clasped Hernandez’s hand. “It’s okay, Erika,” she said. “It’s what I want.”
“How can you say that?” She clutched Fletcher’s hand with both of hers. “The Caeliar could give you medicines we’ve never dreamed of, synthetic organs, gene therapy—”
Fletcher cut her off with a derisive laugh that became a hacking cough. A moment later she steadied herself and replied, “Gene therapy? Like in the Eugenics Wars? No, thank you.”
“All right, forget I said that,” Hernandez said. “But try the medicine, at least, or a synthet—”
“No, Erika,” Fletcher said, more gravely. “This is my choice. It’s my time. Accept it, and say good-bye.”
“Veronica, as your captain, I’m ordering you to let the Caeliar try to help you.”
Sardonic humor lit up Fletcher’s wrinkled visage. “Pulling rank, eh? Go ahead—court-martial me, Skipper.”
Hernandez let go of Fletcher’s hand and twisted so she could glower up at Inyx. “She’s being irrational,” she insisted. “She needs help, but she won’t admit it.”
Inyx shrugged by raising and lowering his gangly forearms. “She seems perfectly lucid to me,” he said. “And the refusal of medical treatment is an entirely valid decision.”
“You can’t be serious,” Hernandez said. “After all your speeches about the sanctity of life and not letting it come to harm, you’ll just stand by and watch her die?”
The Caeliar lowered himself into a deep squatting stance, putting his bulbous head and stretched face on the same level with the seated Hernandez. “Everything dies, Erika,” he said. “Sometimes, death can be thwarted and kept at bay. At other times it’s natural and logical, and should not be resisted with too much vigor. Veronica has chosen to accept the natural life span of her biology.”
