“A world shaped by an ancient and powerful form of terraforming technology,” she said after he had finished, allowing a slight overtone of awe to color her tone. “The discovery of extant machinery capable of making such transformations reliably would be highly significant.”
He nodded, his jawline set, the muscles in his neck obviously tense. “Indeed it would.”
“Yet you have misgivings about this matter,” T’Pel said.
Tuvok turned and walked toward the starscape framed in the window, apparently gathering his thoughts. Turning again to face her, he said, “My initial service in Starfleet began at a time when the terraforming technology of Project Genesis posed a serious danger to Federation security.”
She nodded. “Before we married.”
“Yes.”
“I assume you are referring to the possibility that other powers, such as the Klingons, might have gained access to the technology and employed it as a weapon.”
Tuvok nodded. “Obviously a technology capable of almost instantaneously transforming dead worlds into living ones is also equally capable of effectively doing the reverse—were it to be unleashed on a planet that already harbors life.”
“Of course. Ever since deep antiquity, technology has always been subject to misuse, all the way back to the discovery of combustion on the Fire Plains. It would be illogical to suppose that the technology that remade the planet Titan has just finished surveying would be any different.”
“True. However, no technology of which I am specifically aware has ever posed such profound dangers as Genesis did.”
“And you are uneasy because the possibility now exists of recovering an alien version of that same technology.”
Tuvok’s eyebrows pulled closer together slightly, noticeably accentuating the upward slope of their outer edges. “I am not ‘uneasy.’ I am merely highly cognizant of the dangers inherent in such a discovery.”
T’Pel didn’t believe for a moment that her husband was anything but uneasy, but she concealed her incredulity. She did, however, allow her curiosity to propel one of her own eyebrows aloft.
“Tuvok, you were a science officer when the Genesis technology first threatened to proliferate beyond the Federation, were you not?”
He nodded. “I was.”
“Given the priorities of your job at that time, you must have found the technology fascinating, at least on a purely scientific level.”
He paused. At length, he said, “I did. Nevertheless, Genesis became a hazard that claimed many lives before the technology was finally dismantled and suppressed.”
Had an early encounter with Genesis precipitated Tuvok’s decision to leave Starfleet’s sciences track in favor of the tactical and security work he had pursued over the intervening decades? Though Tuvok had always been notably reticent about discussing that traumatic period in any degree of detail, it was clear that the skill set he had developed since his departure from Excelsior would be indispensable in dealing with the dangers posed by any technology as potent and unpredictable as Genesis.
“Did you know any of those who died as a consequence of Genesis?” T’Pel asked.
He grew silent, evidently carefully considering her question. Finally, he said, “No. At least, I knew no one who suffered any permanent direct effects.”
“Then you can draw comfort from that,” she said.
“No, my wife,” he said, speaking almost in a whisper. His dark eyes had gone cold and distant. “I cannot.”
3
GORN HEGEMONY RECONNAISSANCE VESSEL SSEVARRH
The stack of stellar cartographical data flimsies on the desk of General Technologist Third Class S’syrixx grew slowly higher, no matter how much effort he applied to the task before him.
S’syrixx’s recognition of the fact that the job might well prove impossible wasn’t helping matters any. All we have to do is find at least one new crècheworld to support the warrior caste’s entire reproductive enterprise, he thought as he pulled another starchart flimsy out of the computer terminal’s reader. Disgusted, he sent it fluttering to the moist deck with a distracted flick of his claws.
Also working against him were his omnipresent thoughts of Z’shezhira, who would have been his mate by now had she not disappeared along with the entire crew complement of the warship S’alath more than a full Gornar suncircuit ago. Now that the Hegemonic government had declared Z’shezhira and her shipmates officially dead, S’syrixx seemed to be the only one who held any hope of finding and recovering her.
Though his sense of hope for Z’shezhira’s safe return was higher at some times and lower at others, he was determined never to surrender that hope, however slender it might be, until her body was recovered.
The hatch behind S’syrixx irised open sibilantly and wafted a slight breeze through the dimly lit work chamber’s warm, damp air. The draft carried the distinctive scent of S’syrixx’s old friend R’rerrgran, the ship’s physician.
“How are the environmental cross-comparisons proceeding, S’syrixx?” R’rerrgran asked.
S’syrixx swiveled his head almost all the way around and fixed the older tech-caster with a withering stare. “How well do you think? The developing warrior-cast fetus has extremely exacting biochemical requirements. On top of that, the planetary magnetic field can neither exceed nor lie below a critical threshold value. And the most frustrating thing is that there seems to be no shortage of ‘almost right’ worlds—but ‘almost right’ might as well be an airless void, or the surface of a star. So out of all the tens of thousands of worlds accessible to us, how many do you think are likely to provide an environment capable of nurturing our race’s strongest caste?”
R’rerrgran’s facial scales ruffled in response to S’syrixx’s sarcasm. “I presume you speak ironically about strength to accentuate the warrior caste’s present unseemly state of vulnerability.”
“Do not worry about my words being overheard,” S’syrixx said with a derisive snort. “War-casters’ understanding of irony is on a rough par with their comprehension of even elementary mathematics.” He knew he could have cited his present mission as an illustrative example of the Gorn soldiery’s latter failing. Why do these five-fingered, bug-eyed idiots believe the odds in favor of their quest to be any better than the chance that my beloved Z’shezhira might yet turn up alive and well, a castaway on some remote planet? They’ll spare no expense pursuing the one goal while completely ignoring the other.
“Whether they are irony-impaired or not, the warriors can smell disrespect. You don’t want Captain Krassrr to overhear your comments, even if you don’t believe him capable of understanding them. He may be tempted to gut you anyway.”
“And diminish his own caste’s already slim chances of survival by eliminating one of the relatively few Gorn capable of finding him a new nursery planet? The war-casters may be stupid, but they’re not crazy. Or is that the other way around?”
R’rerrgran bared about half of his razor-sharp teeth and displayed a highly textured frown. “You may not be so indispensable as you seem to think, old friend.”
S’syrixx didn’t like the sound of that. “What are you talking about?”
“Can you access the command deck display system from here?” R’rerrgran said, pointing an index claw toward the terminal that glowed in the semigloom of S’syrixx’s narrow workspace.
“Maybe,” S’syrixx said. He began tapping at the controls of his terminal with all six claws. A security block appeared on the screen, and S’syrixx spoke a series of numbers and letters in Captain Krassrr’s guttural voice. The pictographs for AUTHORIZATION ACCEPTED flashed on the screen.
“You should also take care never to let Captain Krassrr hear you do that,” said R’rerrgran. “Though I must admit that it was nicely done, even for a member of the arts sub-caste.”
S’syrixx accepted the accolade with a simple head nod. Still, he was proud that his arts subcaste status mirrored his proficiency in the mainstream disciplines of the large
r technological caste, such as computer science and the various maths. He also knew that he wasn’t the first member of his family to demonstrate a theatrical-quality arts-caster’s gift for mimicry; according to family lore, his great-granduncle Zsraszk—an arts-caster renowned for his talents using the Voice—had drawn upon intercepted Sst’rfleet communications to mimic the speech patterns of the commander of a mammalian outpost on Inner Eliar more than a century ago. Old Zsraszk’s gift for copying speech—even notoriously difficult-to-manage non-Gorn speech—had enabled Captain S’alath’s warriors to score the first blood in the wars against the expansionist Federrazsh’n. It was a pity that the subsequent untimely intervention of a meddling elder race, as well as that of the hated Federrazsh’n mammal K’irrk, had sullied S’alath’s initial victory, along with Zsraszk’s part in it.
The text on the terminal screen suddenly vanished, displaced by a spacescape whose deep blackness was relieved by the steady cold glow of countless distant stars. Near the bottom of the image was the limb of a partially daylit planet, a green world that looked like so many of the colonies the Gorn Hegemony had established on environmentally compatible worlds throughout nine adjacent and nonadjacent sectors of space.
A few heartbeats after the image appeared, S’syrixx noticed something else—the presence of an artificially constructed object orbiting high over the planet. In the top left corner of the screen one of the other recon vessels in the Ssevarrh’s six-vessel flotilla hove into view, apparently to make close observations of the object, which S’syrixx could now see consisted of a broad, micrometeoroid-scored metal platform out of which projected a tall, equally beat-up-looking towerlike projection. Although there was no way S’syrixx could accurately estimate its size, it gave him the impression of hugeness.
As well as almost unimaginable antiquity. From the look of it, the construct could well be older than the approximately half-million suncircuits that the Gorn civilization had endured.
“Could that be what I think it is?” S’syrixx said.
“Captain Krassrr will no doubt expect an answer to that question,” said the physician. “However, if this is indeed a working version of one of the devices responsible for altering the climates of so many of the planets we’ve found throughout this sector of space—”
“Then Krassrr will expect to use it to create a new crècheworld for his caste should we fail to find one ready-made,” S’syrixx said, interrupting. “This was not the way I had hoped to spend my career.” Like most members of his particular subcaste, he had anticipated a long, quiet life creating and maintaining the Gorn Hegemony’s intellectual demimonde—the eons-old pre-technological oral tradition of preserving and ritually reciting the most cherished documents of Gorn science, religion, literature, theater, and music.
“Don’t worry,” said his friend, who laid his claws companionably across the scales of S’syrixx’s bare shoulder. With his other manus, he pointed toward the ancient platform/obelisk that drifted far above the alien world on the screen. “Should the captain find the results of your inquiries into that ancient object unsatisfactory, he will probably take pains to make your new paleo-terraforming career a brief one.”
S’syrixx nodded mutely as a feeling of intense foreboding tightened his cloaca.
GORN HEGEMONY WARSHIP S’ALATH
Z’shezhira feared that Gog’resssh might finally be about to pick a fight he couldn’t win—a fight that would almost certainly result in the destruction of the S’alath, the deaths of Gog’resssh and his troopers, and the demise of the relative handful of surviving tech-caste hostages the radiation-addled war-casters had enslaved since they’d wrested control of the ship from its rightful crew—most of whom had long since been summarily ejected into hard vacuum.
Z’shezhira was surprised at the sanguineness with which she regarded the inevitability of her own death in such a scenario. Perhaps, she thought as she worked wearily at the multiple-application console to which Gog’resssh always exiled her during her interminable work shifts on the S’alath’s command deck, I should welcome oblivion.
Using the small viewer built into her console, Z’shezhira watched in silence as the image of oblivion approached almost closely enough for her to make out its shape.
She glanced toward Gog’resssh, whose gold-and-silver multifaceted eyes appeared to be riveted to the command deck’s central viewer, which displayed a larger though equally indistinct version of the same distant, vague image that Z’shezhira had been studying on her console.
“Helm, has the approaching vessel detected us yet?” growled the S’alath’s renegade commander.
“Not so far as I can determine, First Myrmidon,” replied the young trooper who was operating the flight control console. Z’shezhira recalled that his name was Sk’salissk.
“Good,” Gog’resssh said in a voice that sounded like two tectonic plates grinding together.
Second Myrmidon Zegrroz’rh, Gog’resssh’s second-in-command, lumbered from the clawholds that encircled the command deck toward the helm station near the center. Though his radiation burns had mostly receded—Z’shezhira had been forced to see to that personally—one of his multiple-lensed eyes was permanently clouded, damaged beyond repair. Z’shezhira had no doubt that both his ruined eye and his remaining good one concealed far deeper and more profound injuries, if only barely.
“Helm,” Zegrroz’rh rumbled, “can you continue to keep us concealed from the approaching vessel?”
“I believe so, Second Myrmidon. Presently we are concealed from their sensors, but not necessarily from visual detection—that is, if the unknown ship approaches us closely.”
Z’shezhira understood, of course, that the planet the S’alath now orbited—one of the outermost ice worlds of the system Gog’resssh had just sent some of his crew to explore in the furtherance of his quest for a new warrior nursery world—did much to obscure the S’alath’s presence; not only would the planet’s frequent cryo-volcanic eruptions tend to scatter active sensor scans, but the very distance between the remote ice world and the more temperate bodies that orbited deeper in the local primary star’s gravity would ensure the S’alath’s concealment.
Until, of course, Gog’resssh decided to make his presence known.
“The vessel crossed this world’s orbit,” the helmsman said, “on a heading for the inner worlds we just finished surveying.”
“We should attack,” Zegrroz’rh said, his unnerving white eye seeming to burrow into Z’shezhira even though she knew he was looking in Gog’resssh’s direction.
“Not yet,” Gog’resssh said.
Relief at the realization that her demise might not be imminent after all warred with disappointment as it occurred to Z’shezhira that her servitude to this aggressive creature and his henchman was to continue. At least if I remain alive, she thought, consoling herself, then at least the possibility of someday seeing S’syrixx again remains.
Zegrroz’rh released a deeply hostile growl as his brows crumpled in a manner that emphasized the unnervingly insectlike quality of his one good eye. “No doubt they are heading toward the world in this system that might one day support our caste’s next hatchery, First Myrmidon.”
Though he hadn’t been addressed, the helmsman growled affirmatively. “They are on precisely that heading.”
“Toward our world,” Zegrroz’rh said, prompting the scales on Gog’resssh’s broad neck and shoulders to rise defensively. Obviously, he perceived Zegrroz’rh’s words and body language as a challenge to his authority.
As she always did during such tense moments, Z’shezhira spared a moment to wish that the two senior war-casters would resolve their differences through combat—preferably the mutually lethal kind. Instead, her innate builder/nurturer’s instinct intervened, moving her to try to keep Gog’resssh calm, despite the possibility that doing so might further prolong her current unacceptable circumstances.
Z’shezhira moved from her station to take up a position directly between t
he two warriors. “Before we take any rash action, should we not try to determine whether or not we have just witnessed the approach of another Gorn vessel? Perhaps it is another recon ship, part of the convoy that we saw coming through here as we prepared to survey this system.”
It took a moment for her suggestion to penetrate, but that proved to be enough to break the tension. “See to it, Zegrroz’rh,” Gog’resssh said. “But do nothing for now to compromise our concealment.”
The second myrmidon backed away muttering and growling, then approached a nearby data console and began tapping into the long-range scan functions.
Moments later a grainy yet intelligible image of the other ship became visible on the command deck’s central viewer. The resolution was poor—no doubt an artifact of the passive scanning techniques Zegrroz’rh had been obliged to use in order to avoid giving away the S’alath’s location—but the vessel was unquestionably not of Gorn origin.
“Disc-shaped forward section,” Zegrroz’rh grunted, with no small amount of enthusiasm. “Two aft engine nacelles.”
“Federrazsh’n,” Gog’resssh said, displaying wicked ranks of serrated teeth. Z’shezhira shuddered, not in response to the warrior’s impressive dentition, but rather at the thought of the freakishly soft, hairy, mammalian life that doubtless infested the other ship.
“Which ship is it?” Gog’resssh asked.
Zegrroz’rh sniffed loudly. “I recognize the configuration. Luna-class.”
“But which ship?”
Realizing that her ability to read the Federrazsh’n’s standard written tongue was probably unique on the command deck, at least at the moment, Z’shezhira focused on the alien characters she saw emblazoned upon the Sst’rfleet vessel’s egg-white hull.
“U.S.S. Titan,” she said. “Registry number eight-zero-one-zero-two.” She wondered if that last detail—the high registry number—would push Gog’resssh toward exhibiting caution when it came to an adversary possessed of such prolific shipbuilding capabilities. Or would it provoke him instead into testing his mettle in yet another unnecessary combat situation?
Star Trek: Typhon Pact 02: Seize the Fire Page 5
