STAR TREK: The Lost Era - 2298 - The Sundered

by Michael A. Martin

  He smiled. “And you be correct ...” He trailed off.

  “Occasionally,” Irina said, grinning mischievously.

  “Sir?” Lojur said, evidently expecting him to detonate any second.

  “I have to inform the captain, Commander,” Chekov said.

  “I completely understand, sir,” Lojur said. “My actions might have caused many unnecessary deaths.”

  “But it may also have prevented as many. In light of the positive outcome, I intend to recommend the lightest possible punishment. Dismissed.”

  Lojur rounded a corner in the corridor near Commander Chekov’s quarters.

  Akaar was leaning against a bulkhead, evidently having lain in wait for him. “Well? What did Commander Chekov say when you told him?”

  Lojur shook his head in confusion. “I’m not sure I made him understand just how serious my actions were. He doesn’t appear very eager to punish me.”

  “Perhaps that is because he looked at your face. It is a map of pain, my friend.”

  Lojur didn’t doubt that for a moment. But it didn’t make him feel any better. “I took a terrible risk with the lives of everyone aboard this ship. That is anathema to a Halkan.”

  “What you did was in the name of peace. Your entire species should be proud of that.”

  “They wouldn’t be if things had gone differently.”

  Akaar’s eyes widened. “There will always be an infinite number of ways that things might have gone differently. You must make peace with those might-have-beens. Then let them go.”

  [366] “Shandra,” Lojur whispered. “You’re talking about Shandra.”

  Akaar nodded. “The most painful of your might-have-beens. You still mourn her, and you always will, I expect. Even for one bred to peace, it can be difficult to allow such a loss to go unavenged. You felt the need to act.”

  “And I nearly committed murder,” Lojur said, shutting his eyes. He could never forget firing his phaser at the unarmed Jerdahn. Had Akaar not intervened then ...

  “But you did not commit murder,” Akaar said, lancing him with his deep brown eyes. “Instead, you channeled your need to act into deeds that may have saved countless lives.”

  Was it my desire for revenge against the Neyel that saved the ship? Lojur thought, suddenly feeling as sick as he had after he had killed the Orions who had raided Kotha Village. How could such an evil impulse ever serve a good purpose?

  Peace. War. Love. Dead Kothans. Green-skinned corpses. Revenge. They swirled about his consciousness kaleidoscopically. He felt estranged from Starfleet and its ideals, just as he had been shunned by the Kotha Village Elders.

  More confused by his conflicting emotions than he’d been since on that horrible day in Kotha, Lojur realized that he had only one place left to turn.

  “Come,” Tuvok said in answer to the door chime. He rose from his meditation mat, taking care not to disturb the geodesic shape of a half-assembled kal-toh puzzle he’d left sitting on a nearby table. Tuvok had always found the game a highly effective aid to his concentration.

  The door slid open, admitting Lojur. “I hope I am not interrupting anything, Lieutenant Tuvok.”

  “I was just finishing my meditations, Commander. How can I help you?”

  [367] Lojur seemed more tentative and hesitant than Tuvok had ever seen him. He was clearly in distress, just as Tuvok was beginning to realize that he had no idea how to help his friend, Lojur broke the silence.

  “Why are you leaving Starfleet, Tuvok? Really.”

  Tuvok looked his friend in the eye. Since this was not the mess hall, and since he knew he could count on the Halkan’s discretion, he decided to be completely candid.

  “This ship is constantly awash in emotions, Commander. Humans tend to treat important Starfleet protocols in an extremely lackadaisical fashion, as we have seen on this very mission. Logical counsel is rarely accepted, even by the highest-ranking officers aboard.” Tuvok considered saying something disparaging about the captain’s challenging Admiral Yilskene to a duel, but decided to hold his tongue.

  “Tell me about the Kolinahr training,” Lojur said.

  Tuvok experienced some surprise at that. Halkans, he knew, were a disciplined people; following the narrow path of total nonviolence as they did required an extreme focus of mind and will. But however disciplined Lojur might be, he was not a Vulcan. Being a Vulcan, for that matter, was no guarantee of success at Kolinahr.

  “Tell me first why you are interested in Kolinahr. Completely purging one’s emotions is a radical step for any non-Vulcan to take.”

  Lojur took a deep breath. “When I was in my teens, I raised my hand in violence. Necessary violence, but violence nonetheless. Afterward, I had no home on Halka. Commander Chekov and Starfleet took me in. Now, I fear I may soon lose that as well.”

  Without warning, the Halkan collapsed onto his knees, weeping. “Shandra’s death has brought that violence back upon me. If I do not learn to control it, it will overwhelm me.”

  [368] Tuvok didn’t hesitate to help his friend. Stepping over to the table, he carefully lifted the tangle of crystalline-metal t’an rods that comprised the kal-toh puzzle.

  Perhaps on Vulcan, he thought, we can both find a measure of peace.

  Tuvok set the puzzle before the distraught Halkan. “Then let us begin together.”

  Chapter 34

  Sulu retrieved the glass of Merlot from the food slot and returned to the couch. Chekov sat on a chair across from him, nursing a small glass of vodka. Chekov hadn’t changed to off-duty gear yet, but Sulu was in his white turtleneck undershirt, and he had kicked off his boots.

  “I still feel as if it’s my responsibility,” Sulu said. “I was in command of the ship when Burgess took the shuttlecraft into the rift. I could have tried to stop her.”

  Chekov snorted. “Well, of course you feel responsible, Hikaru. You’re a Starfleet captain. Everything that happens on this ship is your responsibility, whether you know it’s going on or not. But that doesn’t mean that you’re to blame for her actions. She stole the shuttle all on her own—with a little unauthorized help.”

  Sulu knew that Chekov was referring to Lieutenant Commander Lojur. He was still uncertain as to exactly what punishment the navigator should receive. Perhaps it had been a mistake to allow Lojur to come back to duty so soon after the death of his fiancé. That thought brought with it, unbidden, a sad reminder that there were several dead crew members for whom he and Pavel had to plan memorial services.

  Chekov interrupted Sulu’s clouded thoughts. “Burgess was a real styervo, but I think that in the end, I can [370] understand why she did what she did.” He took a swallow of his vodka, then continued. “I don’t think it was ego that drove her. At least not completely.”

  “Well, she didn’t seem to think so,” Sulu said. “So, what do you think it was?”

  “Humanity has been unified for centuries,” Chekov said. “But the Neyel have been left out of all of that, and they’ll need a lot of guidance if they’re ever to join the human mainstream. How many human diplomats ever get an opportunity to help unite mankind all over again?”

  Sulu nodded. Put that way, Burgess’s passion made a great deal of sense.

  A chime rang out then, followed by Janice Rand’s voice coming over the comm. “Captain, I have Admiral Nogura on subspace for you.”

  Sulu put his glass down on the table and walked over toward his desk. “Put it through to my quarters, Commander.”

  Back to the beginning, Sulu thought as he sat behind the desk and activated the terminal there. This is where it all started.

  “Captain Sulu, I’m looking forward to reading your report regarding the situation with the Tholians.”

  Sulu swallowed. “Yes, sir. I’ve just finished it, but I haven’t filed it yet. If you’d like to hear it now, I’m ready.”

  Nogura smiled as if he were indulging a request instead of making one. “Please do, Captain.”

  Sulu launched into a narrative
of the past days’ events, laying out the highs, lows, and middles, as well as the surprises along the way. He ended with his admission that only the most foolhardy of risks and the sheerest luck had prevented a war. And that because of his dereliction of duty, Burgess had stolen the shuttlecraft Genji and kidnapped key figures in the local Tholian-Neyel dispute in an effort to force a truce whose final resolution was still admittedly uncertain.

  Nogura leaned back in his chair as he listened. When [371] Sulu finished, he sat back upright. “Captain, let’s deal with Burgess first. She revealed sensitive information to the Tholians without authorization. It sounds to me that her actions were beyond the pale long before she stole the shuttle. No matter what she ultimately accomplished, I can guarantee that neither the Federation Council nor Starfleet Command will look kindly upon her should she ever return.” With a slight smile, he added, “Not that I expect that to happen any time soon. Her career is finished.”

  Chekov moved around to the area behind the monitor, and Sulu saw that his expression was full of misgivings. He’s not happy about my taking responsibility for Burgess’s actions, Sulu thought. But I have no real choice.

  “Regarding your own actions,” Nogura said, “I’m not certain that I’d use a phrase like ‘dereliction of duty’ to describe them. True, the assignment I gave you did call for a ‘discreet investigation,’ and you do seem to have failed miserably at that.” He smiled broadly then, as if to soften his last statement. “But in the end, everything seems to have turned out very well indeed for all concerned, thanks in no small part to your own quick thinking.”

  Sulu wasn’t aware he was holding his breath until that point, and he let it out in a rush.

  “From where I sit,” Nogura continued, steepling his fingers in front of him, “Ambassador Burgess seems far more deserving of blame for anything that went wrong on this mission than you are. So let me ask you this: when you file your official report, are you certain you want to include absolutely everything you’ve just told me?”

  Chekov cleared his throat, and held up a hand to get Sulu’s attention. Sulu looked back down at the monitor. “Admiral, will you excuse me for a moment? Something urgent has just come up.”

  “Certainly, Captain.”

  Sulu muted the audio feed on the subspace channel and [372] stood, moving around the desk and out of the visual pickups field of view.

  “What is it, Pavel?” he asked.

  “Don’t you understand what the admiral is telling you?” Chekov asked, scowling. “The Federation Council is going to pressure Starfleet Command to pillory somebody over the various breaches of diplomatic protocol that occurred during this mission. It’ll be a lot harder for them to do that to Burgess in absentia than it would be for them to go after somebody else.”

  Sulu nodded. “I know that.”

  “Well, that somebody they’re after doesn’t have to be you.”

  Chekov stepped forward and put his hand onto Sulu’s shoulder. “You and I have been friends for a long time, Hikaru. I know you want to take full responsibility, the way you’ve always done. But sometimes the responsibility for a bad choice needs to stay with the one who made it. Don’t put your career in jeopardy because of the things that she did.”

  Grinning, Chekov added, “Besides, I don’t want to be the captain that badly.”

  Sulu recalled something that Pavel had said to him earlier: Just remember that taking responsibility for a family member sometimes means having to decide against them when they go astray.

  Burgess’s safety had been his responsibility. Perhaps he was punishing himself for having allowed her to persuade him to let her enter the rift and strike out for Neyel Hegemony space. There was no way even to know for sure that she hadn’t developed interspace-madness during transit, or had simply gotten lost and joined the graveyard of ships that tumbled eternally through the interdimensional depths.

  But making that journey was her decision, not mine. Just as kidnapping Yilskene and Joh’jym was.

  Sulu returned Chekov’s smile, then arrived at a decision of his own. Crossing back to his desk, he was relieved to see that Nogura was waiting patiently, apparently studying [373] something on a padd. Sulu reactivated the audio feed and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

  “No problem at all, Captain,” Nogura said. “I was just reviewing some other reports here. And speaking of reports, have you made a decision about what’s to be in yours?”

  Sulu looked back at him quizzically. “Report, sir? I’m afraid I haven’t had time yet to complete it.”

  Nogura smiled, and pointed directly into the monitor. “Very good, Captain. I’ll expect to see it sometime tomorrow. Nogura out.”

  Sulu stood and stretched. He turned to see Chekov staring out the cabin window, holding a newly filled glass of vodka on the rocks. Sulu picked up his glass of wine and joined his friend.

  As the stars moved by at warp speed, streaks of light that appeared and were gone in a blink, Chekov hoisted his drink. “Here’s to our next mission. May it be unsullied by both monoblades and diplomacy.”

  Sulu grinned, clinked his glass against Chekov’s, then turned to watch the stars fly past.

  Chapter 35

  2298. Auld Greg Aerth Calendar, the Neyel Coreworld of Oghen

  The long war to annihilate the Devils, which seemed to have been raging all her life, was suddenly done.

  And Oghen endured, though it was more than a little worse for wear.

  Still, Vil’ja could scarcely believe it, nor could most of her classmates. Even Father seemed to have given up hope of victory during the darkest hours before the Treaty.

  It’s over, Vil’ja repeated to herself over and over after Father had given her the news. She knew that war was a bad thing. Yet she was both frightened and exhilarated by the sudden wrenching change.

  So what happens now?

  Standing beside her father in the early morning chill, Vil’ja grew quiet, as did the rest of the crowd that had gathered today in the capital city’s broad boulevards and courtyards. Virtually everyone was looking skyward, and Vil’ja and her father were no exception.

  The compact white ship was landing, descending very slowly on its antigravs toward a wide, brick-paved plaza, which the crowd had sensibly decided to leave clear. Vil’ja’s small, bright eyes were drawn irresistibly to the [375] unreadable—yet somehow vaguely familiar—writing that adorned the sides of the small craft’s spotless hull.

  Nudging her father, Vil’ja pointed at the alien vessel. “Do the Devils ever fly ships that look like that?” she asked, feeling a sudden jolt of anxiety at the idea. When she’d first heard about the landing that was to take place this morning, she’d imagined a triumphant Neyel commander would emerge from the ship, holding aloft the head of the leader of the Devil forces. Then she’d had a disconcerting image of the reverse—a Devil brandishing a severed Neyel head.

  Looking up at Father, Vil’ja squeezed his hand, drawing comfort from its rocklike solidity.

  “No, that’s definitely not what a Devil ship looks like,” Father said, smiling down at her. “Remember what the news-net said this morning? This ship is carrying a peace envoy who came all the way from Aerth.”

  Vil’ja nodded, even though the notion of a living person from Aerth was hard to accept. The idea of Aerth being tangible, something more than a setting for bedtime tales, would take some getting used to.

  Even as the white vessel came to rest beside an ornate fountain carved from black volcanic glass, a pair of small Neyel patrol vessels came to ground nearby. Vil’ja found their presence reassuring, since each of the Neyel craft was much bigger than the compact white ship, and probably also better armed as well, judging from the way Father had always described them.

  Hatches on both Neyel vessels quickly opened and several armed troopers stepped out. They marched briskly toward the white vessel, their limbs and tails coming to rigid attention as they took up positions beside what
appeared to be a sealed hatch near the small ship’s bow. Their brilliant silver sashes identified them as an official honor guard, as though the being inside the white ship were a high-ranking official from the Gran Drech’tor’s court. But Vil’ja knew that [376] if the creature from Aerth turned out in reality to be some sort of monster, perhaps a Devil in disguise, the troopers—all of them hard-eyed veterans like her father—would be ready for it.

  Like many Neyel children, she was well acquainted with the muted yet omnipresent sense of dread and worry that always descended like a low fog whenever a parent was called up to defend Blue Oghen from the Devil scourge. Like so many other parents, Father had done his duty, and had come back to the family afterward with many stories, some of which Vil’ja knew he was withholding from her “for her own good.” Mother, too, had taken her turn fighting the Devils during the later phases of the Rift War.

  But Mother had not returned. She had not been so fortunate as Father. Or maybe, as Vil’ja sometimes wondered when Father was lost deep in his cups, it was the other way around.

  Still holding tightly to her father’s hand, Vil’ja looked up, half expecting to see a Devil ship come swooping down on the unassuming-looking Aerth vessel, intent on mindless destruction.

  Instead, she saw only an azure, almost cloudless sky, now completely free of the intense auroras and magnetic storms that had lately disrupted the broadcast of so many of her favorite tridee programs. Father had blamed these troubles on the effects of Riftspace, from which the Devils had sprung. The Rift, he’d explained, had stirred up violence on the surface of the sun, which created some pretty frightening fireworks in the skies of Oghen. It had gotten so bad that Vil’ja had begun to resign herself to the prevailing belief that only the utter extermination of the Devils could save her people. And perhaps not even that.

  Today, everything was different. Now Vil’ja took the sudden complete absence of atmospheric disturbances as a reassuring sign. It showed, as Father had explained, that [377] the Riftmouth was sealing up. It meant that the very fractures in space that had created the Riftmouth were now closing, scabbing over and healing like a sewn and sutured wound.