by Peter David
As Orsova’s face flushed from copper to almost beet red with strain, quite abruptly, even absurdly, the satisfaction meter began to fall. Stiles glared into the hated face, saw the panic and desperation, and snarled as if looking into a garbage pit.
But he stopped pushing. He even let go a little.
“Damn,” he uttered. “You’re just a toothache! You’re not even worth hitting!”
To the obvious amazement of everybody around him, he pulled Orsova back to his feet and let him reel.
Stiles found himself strangely amused and pleased at Orsova’s pitiful display. Over there, Travis was smiling at him in some kind of ironic pride. That felt good.
Shaking his head, he leaned one hip against the helm and commented, “At least I was worth beating up!”
His crewmen rewarded him with a laugh and a round of applause that made him feel like—well, like royalty.
“Just stay there, you puscup,” he said to Orsova. “You’re as imprisoned as I was. Dr. McCoy, would you have a look at Zevon, please? Zack, escort the doctor around the other side of the helm, away from this mulchy moron.”
Playing out his win, he freely turned his back on Orsova as if his former guard were hardly more than a bug on the wall. For the first time, he turned his back on his greatest fear, the ghost of all his nights, and completely dismissed him.
He turned instead to Zevon, as Dr. McCoy probed the Romulan’s wound. “How is he?”
“Superficial,” the elderly doctor confirmed. “Hardly raising a welt. Punched through the skin, scored the intestines—no ruptures, though. Let me have a better look….”
He drew around his medical tricorder and a scanner and started taking readings.
“All right, Zevon,” Stiles began firmly, “you can have what you want. In fact, you can have more than you want. I’m going to take you back to that stupid planet and dump you there with your wife, just like you want. And then I’m coming back into space and demonstrate to you exactly what a Federation promise means.” Leaning forward with theatrical flair, he announced, “I’m going to build your barricade.”
“You, yourself?” Zevon challenged.
From the other side of the bridge, Sykora gasped, “Zevon, can he do it?”
“No!” Her husband flinched as McCoy scanned him. “He certainly cannot possibly do it. The barricade needs raw materials, infrastructure, parts, support—Federation interest will fade before the barricade is built.”
“It’s not going to fade,” Stiles boasted. “I won’t let it.”
Zevon gazed at him in something like disappointment. “And you have so much influence, Eric?”
“I don’t need influence. I have a CST.” Stiles swept his hand wide to illustrate the ship around him, and the suddenly proud crew. “We can build it. A combat support tender is a movable starbase, a flying factory!”
“Of course!” Spock breathed. Even he hadn’t thought of it, and that gave Stiles a particular zing of pleasure.
“Impossible,” Zevon argued. He pointed at Spock, but spoke to Stiles.
“You’re saying this to get what he wants, because you worship him!”
A rumble of frustration rose in Stiles’s throat. Better let that one go. “My crew is packed with trained technicians, mechanics, and engineers. We can build almost anything, darned near anywhere, all by ourselves. And even though you’re refusing to help us, we’re going to go back there and build it.”
Zevon squinted with doubt. “But we have no treaty! Starfleet will not give you permission—”
“I don’t need permission,” Stiles recklessly sparked. “I’m not even going to ask for it. And on top of that, I’m going to use a few other resources available to me right here and now. For instance, Dr. McCoy over there is going to treat whatever’s making your wife sick. I don’t have to let him do that, y’see, because I’m in command here and he has to do what I say. But I’m going to tell him to do that anyway, Zevon, because not everything in life is a tradeoff. And then we’re going to fly away and leave you alone with your planet and your wife and your barricade, and we’ll see if you can forget who did for you what you couldn’t do for yourselves.” He jabbed Zevon in the arm. “You and everybody on that stupid planet are going to find out what real freedom means.”
Across the bridge, Ambassador Spock settled back against the science station and looped his arms into that casual appreciative fold that Stiles had seen so many times on the historical tapes. Stiles got a rush of delight at seeing Spock fold his arms like that, right here on Stiles’s bridge, just as if he liked being here.
Astonished, Zevon could do nothing but stare at him with a thousand emotions pushing at him. Stiles did not turn away from that gaze, determined to show that nothing would stop him from doing what he said he could do, exercising both the power of his command and the industrial might of his ship.
Dr. McCoy looked up then, and clicked off his medical tricorder. His face was stiff, his voice rough.
“He’s not going to find out anytime soon. There must’ve been something on the spike.” He looked first at Stiles, then at Spock. “It’s all over, gentlemen. He’s infected.”
Chapter Twenty-five
MCCOY’S WORDS SHOOK STILES to the bone. Spock too, he could tell, was inexpressibly disturbed. Only seeing the worry on his idol’s face caused Stiles to finally absorb just how rare Zevon’s uncontaminated blood had been to them all. What would come now? Decades of instability in the galaxy? The suction of a collapsing empire on the Federation’s doorstep? Endless struggles and endless repairs, so ships and crews could go back into more endless struggles?
“Call Dr. Crusher to beam over here,” McCoy tersely said. “I want a corroborating opinion. Not that it’ll change a goddamn thing….”
Wordless, his throat too tight to make a sound, Stiles nodded the order over to Travis, who spoke into his comm. “Dr. Crusher, would you beam over please? Dr. McCoy’s request.”
“Acknowledged. One moment.”
The bridge fell to silence. Except for the snapping of electrical systems that had been violated, there was hardly a sound. The squawk of the transporter beam sent a ripple up every spine. Soon Dr. Beverly Crusher stood right there on the bridge, providing a mere haze of hope. But nobody here doubted Leonard McCoy’s diagnosis, not for a moment.
The elegant lady doctor looked around, noted everybody, including the only two Romulans, hesitated briefly over Sykora, then silently concluded that Zevon was the only one who could be the person they’d come here for.
“I think we’re too late,” McCoy told her in a funereal tone.
“Doublecheck me, will you?”
Crusher kept control over her expression, connecting momentarily with Spock as she stepped across the bridge to Zevon and ran her med scanner over him. Then she brought up her own tricorder and compared notes with whatever she had collected while she was gone in Romulan space.
Stiles watched her, worried. Over the doctor’s shoulder, Zevon’s fearful eyes met his. He stepped to Zevon’s side, as if he’d never left, as if his presence alone could protect Zevon from the scourge that was apparently inevitable.
Dr. Crusher shook her head. “It’s spreading fast. In forty or fifty seconds, he’ll be completely contaminated. How did this happen out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Hah!” On the other side of the bridge, Orsova bellowed with joy. “You see? You lose! Your civilization will fall apart now! The Voice is coming! You lose now! You can’t hurt me now! I’m going to be governor of the sector! I won! I won!”
As retorts reeled in his head, Stiles turned toward his old tormenter. Never got the chance, though.
Sykora, until now still fazed by the effects of the stun, came very sharply and dangerously to life. She shoved Travis harshly off his balance and snatched the bloody spike from his hand. As if shot from a cannon, she streaked to Orsova. Before anyone could think of stopping her, she drove the spike through Orsova’s neck with a disgusting pop and a faint
crunch of shattered bone.
At Stiles’s side, Zevon gasped and jolted with shock, but made no move toward his wife. She was an imperial subcommander, after all.
Orsova gurgled as frothy blood welled up into his mouth and he clasped at his demolished throat with both hands, blinked in surprise, then couldn’t suck another breath. No one offered to cushion his collapse onto the deck. There, in a puddle of his own fluids, he died.
Just like that. Over.
And Stiles was glad. And he didn’t feel ashamed of it, either. He promised himself he never would. There were more appropriate things in the galaxy to feel bad about.
Even the sight of Orsova bleeding on the deck couldn’t raise the pall that suddenly descended on the bridge. They’d failed. After all this.
Dr. Crusher huffed in frustration. “He’s right. He won. We don’t have any more alternatives for this mutant doomsday virus. We can’t even get the empress back to her home in time for her to die in her own bed.” Angry, she stuffed her med scanner back in its case and looked snappishly at Dr. McCoy. “Unless you’ve got a rabbit to pull out of your hat, we’re skunked.”
“What do you take me for?” McCoy spread his arms and crowed, “I’m going to stop this venom campaign if it’s the last thing I do—and at the age of a hundred and thirty-odd, everything I do could be the last thing I do.”
“You’ve got something?” Spock stepped to him. “Another uninfected royal family member?”
Invigorated, Stiles pointed at Sykora and blurted, “It’s her, isn’t it? I should’ve known! It’s got to be her! Did he marry his own cousin or something?”
“No, he didn’t,” McCoy denied. “I told you the truth. She’s got no royal family blood at all. Not even close. She’s peasant stock if I ever saw it. Couldn’t be infected if she took a bath in that toxin. But I’ve got something even better.” He looked at Crusher with a winning expression. “You know what they say…fetal-cord blood is about twenty times more potent than the ordinary vein stuff. I won’t even have to wake the little fella up.”
Suddenly the center of attention, Sykora eyed the doctors, then her husband, then Stiles. “What does he mean?”
“You’re pregnant, that’s what!” McCoy announced.
“You knew?” Stiles accused McCoy as both Sykora and Zevon gawked in undeniable surprise. “You knew that and you still let Zevon be a target for assassination? A decoy?”
“Well, of course!” The elderly doctor nodded proudly. “After the first eight or nine decades, you learn to keep your mouth shut. Now, I know what you should name him, y’see. You’ve got to pick something flashy and unique. Leonard James Eric Spock Beverly Saskatoon the First. He’ll be the only one of his kind. You won’t regret it. Wanna see it written down? Hey, kid, got a pen?”
Epilogue
THE CRAMPED LITTLE SICKBAY on board the Saskatoon had never seen so much fame. Over a matter of a couple of days, the midsection of a combat support tender had become the center of the universe. Starfleet’s Lord High Oracle Leonard McCoy and its state-of-the-art shamanness Beverly Crusher were collaborating with every medical facility within comm range. The first several attempts at synthesizing a serum failed, but only by tiny fractions. Gradually the fractions became smaller, and hope swelled.
Busy as he was with construction, Stiles broke away from his crew on the evening of the second day, and with an admitted rush of nerves went to check on Zevon’s progress.
Zevon lay on the portable diagnostic couch that McCoy had ordered brought in. He was clearly in some pain from whatever treatments the doctors were giving him. Sykora was at his side. She hadn’t been able to leave the chamber all this time. After all, she was the center of the center of the universe.
In the small sickbay, Dr. Crusher was bending over a cache of tubes, vials, beakers, microprocessors, and analytical equipment they’d had shipped in. Engrossed in her work, she didn’t even look up when Stiles came in.
McCoy hovered nearby, peering at a colored liquid in a test tube.
Stiles felt he was interrupting something private as he came to Zevon’s side, opposite Sykora, and fielded the obstinate woman’s glare, still loaded with suspicion. Oh, well, couldn’t win everything at once.
Pressing a hand to Zevon’s shoulder, he gained his old friend’s attention through the blur of pain.
“Hey, lightfoot,” he greeted. “You all right?”
“Oh, Eric,” Zevon moaned. “I think I would rather get the plague and die than deal with the cure….”
A smile of empathy broke on Stiles’s face. “No, no, you’ve got your orders. Get better or face the consequences. You don’t want the vindictive captain to find out.”
“If only…he were vindictive enough to…put me out of this misery….”
“Not much longer,” McCoy said. “Don’t make me break out my hip-pocket psychiatry, boy. I’m whuppin’ a dragon here.”
Even through his discomfort, Zevon managed a smile. Stiles tightened his grip in silent reassurance.
He tried to come up with something more to say but was rescued when Ambassador Spock stepped in over the hatch coaming.
“Mr. Stiles, I thought you might be here,” Spock said with not particularly well-veiled contentment.
Stiles instantly saw the undercurrent of success and asked, “How does it look, sir?”
His face expressive—in defiance of legend—Spock spoke almost merrily. “Looks quite well. Your defiant declaration has stirred the resting spirits at Starfleet Command.”
“They’re not going to challenge me or throw me in a brig or anything?”
“Hardly. The admiralty has a longstanding policy, albeit unspoken, of backing up their captains’ flares of caprice. Admiral Douglas Prothero has offered the Zebra-Tango Division of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers and the services of the Industrial Trawler True North to assist the Saskatoon in building the spaceborne Constrictor barricade. Within a matter of months, the waves will go from deadly to harmless.” He turned to Zevon and Sykora, amicably adding, “Your planet will finally be safe.”
Battling a rush of deep emotion, Zevon gripped Sykora’s hand and took a few moments to gather himself. “I will go before the Pojjana people,” he offered, “and convince them of the Federation’s integrity. I can do that…they will believe me.”
“Such a collaboration,” Spock said, “will give Starfleet the leverage to stabilize the sector and declare it green.”
With both admiration and suspicion, Stiles quipped, “But you didn’t have anything to do with that, I’ll bet.”
“Nothing at all,” Spock loftily claimed.
Stiles grinned. “Thanks.”
“You’re very welcome. And how is construction going?”
“Oh, we’ve had to modify Zevon’s diagrams a few times. Luckily, we’re an innovative pack of wolves. Sir, might I say a few things? They’re kind of…personal.”
Spock seemed a little surprised. “Would you like to speak in private?”
“No, I’m not embarrassed anymore. I just wanted to thank you, for everything, past and present. You had faith in me that I didn’t have in myself. I’ll believe in myself as I am, as I can be—not as my father or my grandfather or Starfleet thought I should be. I’ll believe in the Federation, as long as people like you are speaking for it. And I’ll never forget something else you taught me. Probably the most important thing.”
Spock’s dark eyes glowed. It seemed he knew. But he asked anyway. “What would that be?”
As he gazed at his friends both new and old, Stiles absorbed the value of this moment and swore to himself that he would never forget.
“Freedom is never free,” he said.
For E.J.
Chapter One
THE PEREGRINE-CLASS SCOUT SHIP looked much like the falcon that inspired her design, with a beaklike bow and sweeping wings that enabled her to streak through a planet’s atmosphere. Her sleek lines were marred by various scorch marks and dents, which left her looking like a
n old raptor with many scars. Larger than a shuttlecraft yet smaller than a cruiser, she was better armed than most ships her size, with forward and rear torpedoes plus phaser emitters on her wings.
Her bridge was designed to be operated efficiently by three people, allowing her to carry a crew of only fifteen. The engine room took up all three decks of her stern, and most of the crew served there. This proud vessel was state of the art for a scout ship—about forty years ago. Now she was practically the flagship of the Maquis fleet.
“What’s the name of our ship?” asked her captain, a man named Chakotay. His black hair was cut short and severe, which suited his angular face and the prominent tattoo that stretched across half his forehead.
Tuvok, the Vulcan who served as first officer, consulted the registry on his computer screen. “She is called the Spartacus. The warp signature has aleady been modified.”
Chakotay nodded with satisfaction. “I like that name.”
On his right, an attractive woman who looked vaguely Klingon scowled at him. “Let me guess,” said B’Elanna Torres. “Spartacus was some ancient human who led a revolution somewhere.”
Captain Chakotay smiled. “That’s right. He was a slave and a gladiator who led a revolt against Rome, the greatest power of its day. For two years, he held out against every Roman legion thrown against him.”
“And how did this grand revolution end?” asked Torres.
When Chakotay didn’t answer right away, Tuvok remarked, “He and all of his followers were crucified. Crucifiction is quite possibly the most barbaric form of capital punishment ever invented.”
Torres snorted a laugh. “It’s always good to know that my human ancestors could match my Klingon ancestors in barbarism. Considering what happened to Spartacus, let’s not put him on too high a pedestal.”
