[Star Trek TNG] - Double Helix Omnibus

by Peter David

  And Stiles had to make it look good. In the wake of Perraton’s mental leashing, the symbol now lay heavily upon him. If he couldn’t yell at his men, how would he keep them in shape?

  He huffed a couple of steadying breaths, but didn’t lower his voice. Now that he’d gotten up to a certain level of volume, it was hard to reel in from that. He took a moment to survey the squad—bright white helmets, black leggings, white boots, red chest pads against the black Starfleet jumpsuits, and the bright flicker of a combadge on every vest. Elbow pads, chin guards, red visors…looked fair. Good enough.

  Time to go.

  “There are riots going on,” he repeated, “but so far nobody’s tried to breach the embassy itself. Our job is to clear a path between the coach and the embassy and get all Federation nationals out. These people don’t have a space fleet, but their atmospheric capabilities are strong enough to cause a few problems. I won’t consider the mission accomplished until we’re clear of the stratosphere. When we get out of the coach, completely ignore the people swarming around unless they come within two meters or show a weapon. Clear?”

  “Clear, sir!” Carter, Girvan, Moose, and Foster shouted. Perraton nodded, and White raised his rifle. Had they accented the “sir” just a little too much?

  Stiles stepped between them and the hatch. “Mobilize!”

  Perraton took that as a cue, and punched the autorelease on the big hatch. The coach’s loading ramp peeled back and lay neatly across the brick before them. Instantly, the stench of burning fuel flooded the controlled atmosphere inside the coach. At Stiles’s side, Perraton coughed a couple of times. Other than that, nobody’s big mouth cracked open. Stiles led the way down, his heavy boots thunking on the nonskid ramp.

  They broke out onto a courtyard of grand proportions with colonnades flanking it on three sides and the diplomatic buildings on the fourth side—a battery of fifteen embassies, halls, and consulates. Most of them were empty now. The Federation was the last to evacuate. Two of the colonnades were in ruins; part of one was shrouded in scaffolding while being rebuilt. Most of the buildings showed signs of structural damage, but generally the Diplomatic Court of PojjanPiraKot was a stately and bright place, providing a sad backdrop for the ugliness of these protests.

  A quick glance behind showed him the positions of the five fighters landed around the coach. Their glistening bodies, streamlined for both aerodynamics and space travel, shined in the golden sunlight. There was Air Wing Leader Bernt Folmer, their best pilot, code “Brazil,” parked like a big car in front of Greg “Pecan” Blake. Behind the coach the tail fin of Andrea Hipp’s “Cashew” fighter caught a glint of sun. On the other side, hopefully parked nose to tail, were Acorn and Chestnut, brothers Jason and Zack Bolt—but Stiles didn’t bother to check their position. He only hoped they were in sharp order.

  All around were angry people waving signs, some in a language he didn’t understand, others scrawled in English, Vulcan, Spanish, Orion Yrevish, and a few other languages familiar from courtesy placards all over Starfleet Command where multitudes wandered.

  The ones in English jumped out instantly before Stiles’s racing mind. OUT ALIENS…LEAVE OUR PLANET…GET OUT STRANGERS…ALIENS UNWELCOME…CURSE ALIENS ALL….

  Some of the people were calling out in English, too, though clumsily and without really understanding the arrangement of nouns and verbs. The anti-alien message, though, arrowed directly through to the team.

  To the music of enraged shouts from the people rattling gates and creating a din by banging small silver knives on the iron posts, Oak Squad broke into a jog and flooded into a broad shield of sunlight glaring between the embassy and the consulate next door. The doorways and lintels were heavily reinforced with titanium T-girders, and titanium bands swept around every building, two on each story, like shiny ribcages. Stiles glanced around at his squad, making sure nobody pulled ahead of the formation. This had to be crisp. The ambassador was watching from some window inside that embassy. Everybody was watching.

  Fifty meters…

  Oak Squad thundered forward relentlessly, their phaser rifles tight against their chests. As Stiles led his men across the patterned brick, he saw that just the raw heat from the coach’s VTOL thrusters had scorched some of the bricks nearly black and pitted them beyond repair, destroying the geometric design in the historic courtyard.

  His boots felt secure and thick as he crunched over the litter of broken glass, smashed fruit, and rocks that had been thrown by the rioters, who were now milling around the fighters and the coach. These Pojjan people were stocky and thick, with strong round cheekbones and bronze complexions tinged with an olive patina, reminding Stiles of Aztec paintings seen under a green filter. They wore various clothing, from the men’s ordinary shirts and pants or the women’s shiftlike dresses to the brightly beaded tribal tunics and leggings he’d seen on travel posters.

  The travel agencies might as well rip those posters up. Nobody was going to want to come to this dump anymore.

  He cast the rioters a threatening glance or two, but although some were touching the ships’ landing struts they weren’t doing anything destructive. Not yet anyway. If anything happened, the escort pilots would zap them. So he kept moving forward at a pace, letting the natives swerve out of his way. He led the squad manfully through a large puddle of fuel, some of which was still gulping out of a discarded and dented container. Their boots splattered it and freshened the stench.

  Thirty meters.

  Cries of anger, protest, and insult at Starfleet’s intrusion into their courtyard grew louder, as the squad jogged across the brick plateau. Stiles didn’t understand the Pojjan language, but some of these people were shouting in English or Vulcan and waving get-out-of-town banners in English, apparently smart enough to know how to get to the Federation personnel.

  It’s getting to me. I’m allowing it to shake me. Just do the job, get the people out of the embassy, into the coach, and lift off. Ignore the crowd. Just ignore them.

  At his right elbow, Travis Perraton was watching a gang of Pojjan teenagers on the other side of the embassy fence. A flash of flame—the teenagers were lighting up a fuel-soaked towel.

  “They can’t throw that this far, can they?” Blake asked from behind Stiles.

  “They don’t have to,” Perraton said. “We’re jogging toward puddles of kerosene.”

  “Gasoline,” Midshipman Jeremy White corrected from the flank.

  “Stinks,” Dan Moose added, then cast to the man on his left, “Make room, Foster.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Bag the noise,” Stiles snapped, turning his head briefly to the right. “Don’t splash through the gas. If we get it on our uniforms, we’re in big trouble.”

  And that was his error—that one glance over his shoulder. A stunning force struck his left shin just below the kneepad, driving his entire leg out behind him. Blown forward by the force of his own movement, Stiles let out a single strangled yell, leaped forward over a slick of gasoline, and crashed to the bricks just beyond the slick. Though he evaded the gas, he slid sidelong into a pile of garbage dumped on the courtyard. Managing to thrust his arms out, he somehow kept from landing on his phaser rifle, which instead clattered to the brick and butted him in the face shield, then scratched across his bared jaw. If his visor had been up, the rifle would’ve taken out his teeth.

  A blunt force rammed into his lower back—a boot—as Carter tumbled over Stiles, crumpling to the bricks on top of the garbage. Carter rolled and ended up on one knee.

  With his jaw and knee throbbing, Stiles tightened his body, twisted onto his side, and brandished his weapon at the laughing crowd as his face flushed with humiliation. They were laughing at him. His fantasy of a clockwork mission had just cracked and blown up before his eyes.

  Bile rose in his throat, a rashy heat down his legs. His lungs tightened as he felt slimy garbage soak into his uniform and the stench of petroleum knot his innards. The sky wheeled above him, cluttered with whi
te helmets and flashing red visors reflecting the afternoon sun.

  Smiling, Perraton reached to pull him to his feet. “Nice going, lightfoot.”

  “Don’t help me!” Stiles blurted.

  As if bitten, Perraton retracted his hand. Stiles rolled to his feet, now smudged with the gummy remains of garbage and mudballs.

  When he got to his feet, Stiles staggered a few steps in the wrong direction and was forced to endure the foolish chickenscratch of turning around and struggling back to the front of his squad, and the further embarrassment of realizing his men were deliberately slowing down so he could get in front. He slammed his way between them, elbowing Perraton and White cruelly out of his path. He didn’t need their charity!

  At the gates, two Pojjan guards immediately opened the iron grid and let them in without a word. The embassy’s medieval-looking carved wooden door, three guys wide and set between two gargoyles, also opened automatically.

  No, not automatically—this door was manual. Another guard or servant of some nationality Stiles didn’t recognize was now peeking around the door’s iron rim like a shy cow peeking out of a barn. He was an elderly man, with bent shoulders and bright green eyes set in a jowly dark face with stripes painted on it. More tribal weirdness.

  Moving further into the heavily tiled foyer, Stiles suddenly felt ridiculously out of place. The foyer was splendid, its mosaics of gold-and-black chipped stone and glossy ceramics portraying some kind of historic battle scene and the coronation of somebody. Must be from way back, because this wasn’t a monarchical culture anymore.

  Was it?

  The guard pushed the big door shut and swung a huge titanium bolt into place to lock them safely inside, then turned to the clutch of evac troopers and gasped, “One minute! I’ll get the ambassador’s assistant!”

  And he disappeared into a wide archway that was two stories tall.

  Oak Squad stood in the middle of the gorgeous tile floor, their uniforms scuffed and stinking, and looked around.

  “I’d hate to be the guy who cleans the grout,” Perraton commented.

  White grunted as he scanned the mosaic on the ceiling. “How long you think we’ll have to wait?”

  “Not long,” Stiles filled in. “They called for us to come get them, so they’re probably ready to leave. And they’re Vulcans, so you know they’re efficient.”

  “How do you know they’ll be stiffs?” Moose asked.

  “Because Ambassador Spock’s a st—a Vulcan. They like to have their own kind around. They understand each other better than we do.”

  “Oh, right,” White drawled. “They do everything better than we do.”

  Stiles scoured him with a glare. “Don’t start on me, Jeremy.”

  He turned away, but in his periphery he noted Perraton’s quick motion to White, erasing any further annoying comments.

  Though they stood in this wide foyer feeling dirty and small, they were not alone. Sounds of footsteps and voices leaked from the depths of the embassy halls, and twice Stiles saw ethereal forms slip from one office to another. Did they trust him to get them out safely? Had they seen the botched choreography of the landing? Did they wonder whether the ensign in command was competent enough to handle this?

  He gripped his phaser rifle until his hands hurt and shifted from foot to foot, halting only when a young woman—a human—skittered through the grand main door and into the huge foyer. Stiles didn’t pay attention…. The small-boned woman, with tightly wrapped brown hair, tiny pearl earrings, and a twitch in her left eye, went directly to the tallest of them—Jeremy White—and breathily said, “I’m Miss Karen Theonella, Ambassador Spock’s deputy attaché. Are you Ensign Stiles?”

  She had a tight foreign accent that sounded Earth-based, but Stiles couldn’t pinpoint the country.

  “He’s over there, ma’am,” White told her, and gestured.

  Stiles stepped through the cluster of Starfleeters and took his helmet off, revealing his sweat-plastered blond hair. “Eric Stiles, ma’am. I’m here to evacuate the entire embassy. Nobody should be left behind.”

  “We understand.” Miss Theonella rubbed her tiny pink palms as if kneading bread dough between them. “All embassy envoys, functionaries, ministers, delegates, and clerks will be going, as well as four Pojjana defectors who lost their homes in the last Constrictor. They’re being given asylum here and we have clearance for them to be evacuated with us. In all there are thirty-five of us.”

  “Thirty-five!” Perraton blurted. Then he instantly clammed up, but the number twenty kept flashing in his eyes like beacons.

  How could seven of them safely escort thirty-five dignitaries through fifty meters of rioting?

  “We’re prepared, ma’am,” Stiles shoved in, more loudly than necessary, before anyone else could speak up. “About the landing…the ambassador is probably wondering why we were so…out of formation….”

  “What?” Miss Theonella’s white temples puckered and her brows came together like pencil points. “We can’t see the courtyard from here. There are only reception rooms on the court side of the building. Was there some reason you wanted us to be watching you? Was there a signal?”

  He stared at her, caught between relief and disappointment that nobody had been watching. “Uh…no, no signal.”

  Preoccupied, the thin young woman simply said, “Continue to wait here, please, Ensign. I’ll get the ambassador.”

  Again the evac squad stood alone, holding their rifles, standing in the middle of the gleaming tile floor, listening to the drumming chants of angry people outside in the square and trying to imagine how they were going to hustle thirty-five dignitaries through that. The unpleasant possibility of rushing half of them out to the coach, then coming back for the second group—Stiles winced. Two trips through that courtyard full of alien-haters? Was that safer than one big rush? If he ordered two separate groups, would the angry people see that as their last chance to get them and attack the second group?

  “Wonder why they hate aliens,” Dan Moose voiced.

  Stiles noted that his men were looking at the windows and doors, but his own eyes were focused on the long hall of offices into which Miss Theonella had disappeared. The ambassador was in there somewhere.

  All the men turned to face the hall to their left as a crowd of elegant dignitaries bobbed toward them. In the midst of them was the tall, instantly recognizable figure of the famous Ambassador Spock.

  Bow? Kneel? Handshake?

  “Don’t faint! Eric, stand at attention!”

  Perraton’s anxious whisper boomed in Stiles’s ear like a foghorn.

  “Stand at attention!”

  “Attention….” Stiles planted his boots on the tile, but wasn’t able to get them together. He squared his shoulders, raised his chin, held his breath, clutched his rifle, and forced an appearance of adept steadiness and control. Cool. Calm. Military. Crisp. In control. In charge. Confident. Smelly.

  The ambassador and his party approached them, but Spock wasn’t looking at them. Instead his dark head was bowed as he spoke to Miss Theonella, who was clipping along at his side. The ambassador listened, nodded, then spoke again while a male attendant slipped a glossy blue Federation Diplomatic Corps jacket onto the boss’s shoulders.

  The sight was a shock—Stiles had expected the flowing ceremonial robes that Vulcan seniors were usually seen wearing, but now that he saw Spock in the trim gray slacks and dark blue jacket with the UFP symbol on the left side, that outfit seemed to make more sense for a spaceborne evacuation. Robes might be harder to handle on boarding ramps and in tight quarters.

  Why hadn’t he thought of that?

  Though Spock—tall, narrow, controlled—possessed all the regal formality common to his race, his famous form was somehow less imperious in person than Stiles had anticipated, his angular Vulcan features more animated, and framed by the fact that he was the only Vulcan in the bunch. Of course, Stiles had only seen still photos or staged lecture tapes. Seeing Spock in real lif
e was very different—he wasn’t stiff at all.

  As they approached, he could hear Miss Theonella’s thready voice.

  “…and the provincial vice-warden will be sending his prolocutrix as proxy to speak for the entire hemisphere at Federation central. Also, sir, the consul general’s wife and children are waiting in the Blue Room, and Chancellor De Gaeta’s wife is in his office.”

  Miss Theonella finished her sentence just as she and the ambassador and their party came into the foyer.

  “Thank you, Karen, very good work,” Ambassador Spock said gently, countering her quivering report with his silky baritone voice. “Suggest to the Sagittarian military attaché that he post a Pojjana communications sentry, and that person must speak both Bal Quonnot and Romulan.”

  That voice! That famous voice! Stiles had been hearing it all his life! Historical documentaries, training tapes, mission interactives, holoprograms—now he was here, in person, right in the same room with that voice!

  “This is Ensign Stiles,” Miss Theonella added with a gesture. “And the evacuation escort men, sir.”

  The ambassador scanned the team, then fixed his gaze at Stiles. Directly at him. Right in the eyes! He was looking right at him!

  Those eyes—like blades! Black blades!

  Stiles tried to take a breath, but all he got was a gulp of garbage fumes from his soaked trouser leg. As his lungs seized up, he felt the boink-boink of Perraton’s finger poking him in the back.

  Report, you idiot!

  “Ev…Evacuation Squad reporting as you requested, sir! Ensign Eric J. Stiles, Starfleet Special Services reporting, sir! One G-rate transport coach, evacuation team, and five fighter escorts, sir!”

  The ambassador’s black-slash brows went up like bird’s wings. The chamber fell to silence. Stiles’ fervid report echoed absurdly.

  Calmly Spock said, “At ease, Ensign.”

  His deep mellow voice took Stiles utterly by surprise.