Sh’Zava’s piercing, critical gaze fell on him. “And if they can? You would put your crew in danger.”
“My crew is trained for danger, Captain, better than any Andorian civilians who might end up in a crossfire. If there’s an attack coming, let’s control the battlefield as much as possible. On the Enterprise, at least we’ll have the home-court advantage.”
The slim, strong shen hissed through her teeth. “I hate to concede that I can’t protect my citizens on my own world. But my personal pride is not what I’ve sworn to protect. I’ll begin arrangements to transfer the Aenar survivors to the Enterprise at once.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Kirk said, holding her gaze to convey his sincere appreciation. Then he turned to Thelin. “Commander, I’d like you to come aboard as liaison to the Aenar. They need someone they know and trust, now more than ever.”
“Thank you, Captain. I was about to request exactly that.” He gave a tight smile. “I had hoped my first visit to the Enterprise would be under better circumstances.”
Kirk blinked, remembering a different Thelin on a different Enterprise. He realized he’d unconsciously started thinking of the thaan as a member of his crew already.
“We make do with the reality we have, Commander,” he said. “So let’s get started.”
U.S.S. Enterprise
“I know it’s a bit crowded with this many people,” Nyota Uhura said to the sixty-eight Aenar who stood assembled in the main atrium of the Enterprise’s recreation deck, turning their heads and waving their antennae in all directions to take in the sounds and sensory impressions of the large, two-story chamber. “But it’s the largest single space on the ship that has the facilities to take care of so many.”
It left her somewhat staggered to think that she might be gazing upon the entire surviving Aenar species, save for a smattering of Andorians with partial Aenar heritage, in small enough portions that they had not considered themselves under threat and had declined the offer of protective custody. But five of the Aenar who had assimilated into Andorian families had brought their part-Aenar children of various ages with them—only one child each, as was apparently usual for Andorians these days. Commander Thelin also stood alongside her, holding the hand of his five-year-old daughter, Cheremis. Though she was only one-sixteenth Aenar and showed no outward sign of it that Uhura could discern, the commander had not wished to take any chances with her safety.
“Rest assured,” Thelin told the group, “that even though this is a makeshift facility, it is as secure as any location aboard the ship. This class of starship has a dual shielding system: the standard, directional deflector grid within the hull and an advanced force-field screen that surrounds the entire vessel like a bubble. The aft saucer deflectors are being kept up at all times to shield this area of the ship against transporters, even when other portions of the deflector grid are lowered to allow the crew to beam to and from Andor. If a threat is detected, then both shield systems will be fully raised. Additionally, we have equipped this entire facility with transporter dampers a generation more advanced than the ones around the Aenar city.”
Kinoch zh’Lenthar tilted her head skeptically. “We thought our dampers and natural disruption fields were good enough to protect the city. We were wrong.”
“As you can perceive, we do have an additional line of defense.” Thelin gestured toward the armored security guards who stood vigil at all entrances to the deck, armed with hefty tri-beam phaser rifles. “Multiple guards will be on duty at all times.”
“Will we have no privacy?”
“There are private alcoves and facilities on the balcony level above, and a couple of semiprivate lounges on this level through the side archways,” Uhura explained. “We’re converting the upstairs rooms into dormitories right now. The stairs are through the rear doorway on your right, or you can take either of the forward turbolifts up one level.”
“But let us face the facts,” Thelin told the Aenar activist, his voice pitched toward the others as well. “You are all under threat, and isolation is a luxury no Aenar can currently afford.”
“We have always preferred to keep to ourselves. Can we be promised that your crew will not intrude on us in our grief?”
The elder th’Miraph stepped forward to confront her. “Be realistic, Kinoch. All of us here are more gregarious than the Aenar norm—it is why we are still alive, because we chose to leave our city for whatever reasons. Even in our isolation from the Andorians and the Federation, we still valued community and connection among ourselves. And now that there are so few of us left, is it wise to deny the company and support of whoever is willing to offer it?”
Uhura picked up on that. “Indeed, we have a number of telepaths among our crew. Kinoch, you know of them from my mind. They feel kinship with you and would welcome the opportunity to spend time with you, to support you in any way they could. We’ll respect your privacy if that’s what you wish, but I hope you’ll consider letting them in.”
Zh’Lenthar’s antennae waved, and many of the others’ wiggled in response. Uhura got the impression that they were communing telepathically. “Very well,” the activist said a moment later. “The telepaths, at least.”
“And your crew has our thanks,” th’Miraph added pointedly, “for surrendering their recreational space for our comfort.”
“You’re very welcome,” Uhura replied. She declined to mention that the crew would still have the arboretum in the secondary hull and the officers’ lounge just behind the bridge as fallbacks. A crew of nearly five hundred people spending five years in deep space needed all the recreational facilities they could get for the sake of their morale and mental health, but to these refugees, it might seem like an overindulgence in luxury.
“And rest assured,” Thelin added, “that we are doing everything in our power to identify and neutralize the threat, so that you can return to Andor as soon as feasible.”
“And what then?” asked another member of zh’Lenthar’s activist group, a lanky thaan named Shinai. “What then? We have no home left. Not enough of us to repopulate. How can we hope to rebuild?”
Thelin stepped forward to confront him. “I cannot guarantee that every problem has a solution,” he said. “But I can guarantee that giving up is never a solution. My advice is that you do the same thing in this situation that we all do in every situation: Strive. Adapt. Learn. Persist—until it ends. Solve one problem at a time. That is life. Do you understand?”
Shinai blinked several times, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, I understand.”
Zh’Lenthar moved to stand beside him, contemplating Thelin with new appreciation. “Yes. We all do.”
* * *
When Leonard McCoy arrived at Specialist T’Nalae’s quarters with Nurse Liftig at his side, he found the young Vulcan scientist lying flat on the floor, clad in a white bathrobe. Standing beside her was Barbara Attias, the engineering tech whose quarters shared the bathroom with T’Nalae’s. “I found her passed out in the shower when I got in,” Attias explained. “After I called you, I had it materialize a robe for her and … I hope it’s okay.”
After reassuring her briefly, McCoy scanned T’Nalae, reviewing the data as it showed up on his medical tricorder screen. “Funny … surprising amount of activity in the—”
T’Nalae opened her eyes and sat up abruptly, making Attias yelp and almost knocking McCoy over until Ron Liftig caught his shoulders and helped him up. The specialist turned her head sharply back and forth, taking in her surroundings. “Explain.”
McCoy gestured to Attias. “Barbara there found you unconscious and called us. Do you remember passing out?”
She blinked. “Yes. There were … headaches. Since … the Aenar arrived.”
“Yes … it does look like your paracortex has been unusually active. There’s a residual psionic charge there. We’ve been seeing a lot of headaches, anxiety, and so forth in our psi-sensitive personnel over the past few hours. The Aenar … they’re powerful telepaths, and
they’re in a lot of pain. They don’t intend to project it onto others, but it’s so strong that it’s hard not to. The other telepaths on board are all affected—though you’re the only one so far to lose consciousness from it.”
Her gaze sharpened upon him. “Why?”
“Maybe we can find that out once we get you to sickbay.”
Despite McCoy’s recommendation that she wait for a stretcher, T’Nalae insisted on walking to sickbay, and indeed she showed no ill effects from her bout of syncope. An examination on the micro-diagnostic table showed her to be in excellent health, even surpassing the results of her physical on first joining the crew. According to the detailed brain scans on the full-length wall screen next to the table, the heightened paracortical activity was the only anomaly in her readings.
“Can you explain it?” T’Nalae said, studying him closely.
McCoy crossed his arms. “Well, I can’t find a physical cause, which makes me wonder if the difference is psychological. The other telepaths in the crew feel acceptance and affinity for the Aenar. So when they feel the Aenar’s grief being broadcast, they let it in. They’re willing to sympathize—in the most literal sense of the word.
“But you’ve made it clear that you’re not comfortable with the Aenar and the nature of their telepathy. So maybe when you felt their grief and pain in your mind, you resisted it. And by doing so, you put your mind under greater strain. Maybe that made the pain or anxiety severe enough that you passed out. Maybe your brain even shut itself down as a defense mechanism.”
“I see,” T’Nalae said. “Tell me—how are the others coping with the distress?”
“Most of them have gone to visit the Aenar on the rec deck, commiserate with them. They seem to think it makes it better. There’s a human saying—sorrow shared is sorrow halved.”
“Then by going to the rec deck—by reaching out to the Aenar—I will get better?”
“I know it’s not what you want to hear, T’Nalae. But I hope you’ll at least consider—”
“Say no more.” She rose abruptly from the diagnostic table. “You’re right, Doctor. This is a wake-up call. If my resistance to the Aenar is hurting me, then it’s time for me to change. I should seek them out, as the others have done. They’re still on the recreation deck?”
Her sudden epiphany seemed too good to be true. And since she’d awakened, she’d seemed unusually intense—though judging from what he’d heard about her from Reiko Onami and others, she’d always been intense. He glanced back at the diagnostic screen, confirming that there were no signs of neurological imbalance beyond what could be accounted for by the Aenar’s influence.
Besides, he’d seen on Sarpeidon, in that time when Spock’s emotions had been somehow unleashed by his travel to the past, that Vulcans without logical reserve could be volatile and mercurial in their moods. Maybe, in some cases, that could be a good thing. Maybe it’s the logic that makes them so damn stubborn, so sure they’re always right.
“They are,” he said. “But I suggest you take it slow. Maybe just sit with the others and listen for a while. Think about what you hear, and what you feel.”
Her lean body strained toward the door, as if she were impatient to pursue her new goal. But she turned back to him and offered a confident smile. “Good advice, Doctor. Don’t worry—they’ll hardly know I’m there.”
Six
“Ready or not, here I come!”
Marcella DiFalco uncovered her eyes and began to search the rec deck for Getran, the four-year-old son of one of the Aenar refugees. The boy’s Aenar mother—or rather, his zhavey—turned her way and chuckled, taking care not to give away her child’s location. The Aenar seemed to find it endlessly amusing that a human like DiFalco was so dependent on her sense of vision that merely covering her eyes rendered her unaware of the actions and movements of the people around her. She had wondered—belatedly, after already starting the game—if choosing an activity so dependent on vision would be seen as a slight toward the Aenar, but if anything, it had turned out to have the opposite effect.
Indeed, DiFalco had initially been the one hiding from Getran, on the assumption that her esper intuition would give her an unfair advantage if she were the seeker—for hybrids like Getran never seemed to inherit their Aenar parents’ telepathic gifts. But she’d failed to account for Andorian antennae and their sensitivity to electric fields and motion. The boy had been able to find her in mere moments, no matter where she hid on the rec deck. Once the positions had been reversed, the game had become far more challenging. Even though she could get a general psionic sense of the boy’s nearness, he had proven unusually creative in finding and exploiting hiding places she never would have considered. Observing their youngest child so completely outmaneuvering a crack Starfleet navigator was a further boost to the frightened Aenar’s morale, so DiFalco made a show of it and didn’t try very hard to follow her intuition. “Oh, where are you this time? Where could you be?”
Of course, she also had to put up with the laughter from her crewmates as they watched her humiliate herself. In addition to the multiple security guards (who mostly contained their amusement at her expense), Daniel Abioye, Jade Dinh, and Edward Logan were here too. Commander Spock had granted all four New Human crew members dispensation from their normal duties so they could assist the Aenar, bonding with them and trying to reassure them that, while they may have lost the majority of their own people, they were still connected to the greater whole of the galaxy’s telepathic community. Just about all of the telepaths on board had visited the Aenar at least once, including Spock, the telekinetic Crewman Zabish from Kazar, and Ensign Palur, an Argelian descended from the planet’s ancient priestesses and inheriting their rare empathic gift. DiFalco even noticed T’Nalae hovering in the background now. She hadn’t tried actively engaging with the Aenar yet, but at least she was here. DiFalco was glad she’d finally started to overcome her resistance.
Reiko Onami had been spending a lot of time with the Aenar as well, offering one-on-one counseling to those who wished to talk out their problems instead of seeking psychic solace. The dainty, pretty xenopsychologist was currently in one of the side lounges, in a group session with the four oldest part-Aenar children—save only Getran and Commander Thelin’s daughter, Cheremis, who were still too young to cope with the issues being discussed. DiFalco hoped the boy hadn’t snuck in there to hide. The emotions she felt emanating from that lounge were rather fraught.
But no; as she reached out with her mind, trying to feel the boy’s bright, pure emotions, she caught a familiar whiff of amusement from the upper level. She made her way to the forward turbolifts, exchanging a friendly smile with the security guards th’Clane and Vidmar as she passed them, and rode up one deck to begin searching the small, individual game rooms, holotheaters, and privacy lounges that flanked the main atrium on the balcony level.
Her sense of Getran’s mixed anxiety and anticipation at being discovered intensified as she moved aft, and she grinned. “I’m getting closer!” she lilted. “There’s no getting away from me now!”
Someone screamed.
More screams followed, and a surge of terror from multiple minds nearly overwhelmed DiFalco. Gathering herself, she sent an urgent thought Getran’s way: Stay hidden. No matter what.
The sound of phaser fire joined the screams as DiFalco made her way to the rear balcony. She heard Worene above the Aenar’s cries: “Security to bridge! Intruder alert! An unidentified life-form has appeared in the rec deck! It is hostile, repeat, hostile!”
A transparent, two-story planter in the rear corner of the atrium provided cover as she peered through the leaves at the scene below. The first thing she saw was Shantherin th’Clane trading blows with a dark bipedal figure, his burly, armored frame blocking her view. The other guards were shielding the terrified Aenar as they backed away, and she could feel the minds of community leaders th’Miraph and zh’Lenthar sending out calming thoughts to their people, though in differing ways; the e
lder broadcast reassurance and trust that Starfleet would protect them, while the young activist radiated defiance, urging her followers to remain true to their Aenar unity and pacifism no matter the provocation. DiFalco hoped the mixed messages would not undermine the intent of calming the group.
From her overhead vantage point, she could see that Logan and T’Nalae were working together to herd some of the Aenar into one of the side lounges, trying to hurry them and calm them at the same time. DiFalco caught T’Nalae’s eye and nodded her thanks, moved that the young Vulcan had come through when she was needed. T’Nalae returned the nod briefly before she disappeared from view.
This close to the rim of the saucer, DiFalco could hear and feel the surge of the force-field generator coils that ringed it as they were promptly activated in response to the alert, forming a defensive bubble around the Enterprise. Yet she knew the stronger, hull-hugging deflector shields had already been in place around this section of the saucer the whole time, as had the transporter damping field around the recreation complex. So how had the intruder gotten aboard?
The “unidentified life-form” shot out a fist with enough force to knock th’Clane down and send him tumbling, and DiFalco finally got a clear look. The figure was humanoid, of moderate height and lithe but strong build, its gender indeterminate. It was encased from head to toe in streamlined body armor, deep scarlet in hue with black upper arms and legs and a textured black strip around the waist with a large red crystal in front fringed in silver, suggestive of a belt. The helmet’s face was smooth and featureless, a crimson cabochon held in its black setting by four claw-like silver prongs in an X configuration. The armor’s textural details and joint structures appeared almost organic, suggesting the chitin of an insect, but the material looked more like a mix of crystal and metal.
A phaser beam struck the intruder from somewhere below DiFalco’s vantage, but it merely sparked off the armor and briefly staggered the humanoid. The intruder then cupped a hand in front of the red belt crystal, which glowed—whereupon a shield materialized on the intruder’s left forearm, seemingly of the same material as the rest of the armor. The warrior used the shield to deflect another phaser beam as it strode forward.
The Higher Frontier Page 9
