by David Stern
“The captain will want to know,” Spock said. Pike and the Klingon had spoken on numerous occasions since Enterprise had entered the sector. They had developed, judging from the captain’s tone when he spoke of Kritos, a grudging respect for each other.
“The captain will want to know,” Number One agreed. “Mr. Garrison?”
The lieutenant nodded. “Opening a channel now.”
“A most unusual display, sir. Most unusual.” Hoto, seated on the cushions just behind him, leaned forward and whispered in Pike’s ear. She needn’t have bothered; the noise the dancers were making—the various grunts and exclamations, the slap of the feet on floor, the jangling of the massive ornamental jewelry they wore, both male and female—was loud enough to cover any conversation the two of them might have, short of a full-on screaming match.
And the musicians—five of them, four drumming, one playing an amplified string instrument of some sort—were making more than enough of a racket, even in the quieter passages, to take care of that kind of volume as well.
“Note the males, performing in congruent position with the females. To my knowledge, this lacks precedent within the Orion culture,” Hoto continued.
The captain nodded. Frankly, there wasn’t really precedent for this kind of dancing anywhere he could think of, except for this bar on Optho III that Loman Stocker had dragged him to once. To his eye, the performance was sex—pantomimed animal copulation—played out in public, at a frenetic, almost desperate pace. Time and time again, each of the dancers changing partners every few seconds, moving faster and faster and faster, wearing, the males in particular, glazed, almost drugged expressions. Which could have been acting as well, Pike supposed, a simulation of the males’ instinctual reaction to the female pheromones. He guessed it was supposed to be erotic; it didn’t feel that way in the slightest to him. Maybe because of the hypo Boyce had given him earlier. Or maybe because he still hadn’t been able to rid himself of the feeling that there was something slightly odd, slightly off, about this entire affair, the dance, the reception itself.
That feeling had started the second Pike entered the reception area and saw the buffet, the musicians, and the line of Orions waiting to greet him. Ship’s officers and pirates, merchants and free traders, civilians and courtesans, a dizzying display of color and costume, all of whom seemed—for that brief second before they became aware of his presence—as uncomfortable in the moment as he was.
Actually, he’d felt that sense of unease even earlier. As soon as he and the others—Tuval, Smith, Ross, and Hoto—had begun following Liyan and her guards away from where Magellan had docked, deeper into the Orion ship. A sense of unease in his gut, which he initially chalked up to simple geometry, to the fact that the corridors aboard Enterprise —those within its primary hull, at least, the saucer section of the ship—were all gentle, flowing curves, whereas those on Karkon’s Wing were all straight lines. Right angles, sharp turns, sections of corridor branching off the main path at what seemed like random intervals. Some of those branching passages had an entirely different look as well, had clearly been put together using different construction techniques, different construction materials, metals of varying composition and color. As they had walked away from Magellan (thirty meters straight ahead, one right turn, fifty meters, up one deck, another thirty meters forward, and through the second entry door on their left), it had become clear to Pike that while the Orion ship’s exterior lines mimicked a standard Marauder -class vessel, inside the configuration was entirely different. Karkon’s Wing predated the class entirely, was his guess. How old it was exactly …
The music stopped.
The three male dancers collapsed to the floor as one. The three females, who had been hidden behind them, stepped forward now, arranging themselves in single file so that seen from head-on, there seemed to be just one of them. The lead female dancer turned to face Liyan, who was seated on the cushioned platform to Pike’s immediate left, and bowed.
The tallith stood and began clapping. The rest of the Orions quickly followed suit. Pike and his crew did the same.
“Magnificent,” Hoto said. “Truly amazing. I am privileged to have witnessed such a display.”
“Thank you,” Liyan said.
“I feel the same,” Pike said, though what he felt right at that second was more along the lines of impatience than anything else. “But—”
“You wish to discuss the raids. I understand completely.” Liyan gestured toward the other side of the room, where tables of food were being wheeled into place. “Shall we do so while dining?”
She smiled at him. Pike smiled back.
During the dance, the captain had had plenty of opportunity to study the tallith close-up, to see that the smoothness of her skin, the sparkle in her eyes, even the sheen of her hair, came from artfully applied makeup and ornamentation. She was older than she’d seemed initially; the veins on the backs of her wrists, the sag of skin along the tendons in her neck, gave away her years, which Pike put closer toward the upper end of Orion middle age … whatever that was.
All that being said, though, there was still something about her …
“Better to converse on a full stomach,” he replied, and fell into step alongside her. His people fell into place behind him. Tuval, Ross, and Smith at least, Pike saw out of the corner of his eye. He heard Hoto still speaking, her voice fading away—it sounded as if she was talking to one of the dancers—as they crossed the room.
“These raids by the Klingons,” Pike said. “How many have there been?”
“That I know of”—Liyan pursed her lips—“a half-dozen.”
“And were they preceded by any communication from the Empire?”
“No.”
“No demands, no clues to why—”
“Why is obvious,” Liyan snapped. “They desire our territory. They desire our resources. To rule and exploit our people.”
“There has to be something else,” Pike said.
“There is nothing,” Liyan said.
She stopped walking, all at once. Pike looked up and saw why. Gurgis stood in front of them, blocking their way.
“I must speak with you, Tallith.”
“I am occupied.”
“It cannot wait.”
“Cannot?” She stared the larger man down.
“Should not, Tallith.” Gurgis lowered his gaze. “Should not wait.”
She frowned. “Very well. Excuse me a moment, Captain,” she said to Pike, and drew the larger man off to one side.
Tuval stepped up alongside him. “Guess we know who wears the pants in this family,” he whispered into Pike’s ear.
The captain nodded. Indeed they did. It was obvious from the body language of the two as they spoke, the tallith leaning forward to make her point, Gurgis lowering his gaze, avoiding eye contact, submissive.
“Excuse me.” Pike turned and found himself face-to-face with an enormously fat, blue-skinned Orion.
“You are the human captain?”
“I am. Christopher Pike.”
“I am Kax Chelubi. Of the Caju of the same name.” The man bowed low and then lifted his head again. Or was it a man? Pike wondered. Chelubi’s makeup was so heavily laid on, his (her?) body so shapeless underneath the long flowering cloak, the captain had no idea.
Pike spent the next few minutes listening to a litany of complaints from Chelubi, something to do with Federation tariffs on goods coming from the Klingon Empire through the Borderland. Pike kept trying to explain that he had nothing to do with Federation trade policy; the Orion kept making repeated references to “how well” the captain could do for himself were he to reconsider the tariffs.
It took Pike a good few minutes longer than it should have to realize the merchant was trying to bribe him. He was on the verge of telling Chelubi what exactly to do with those bribes when he felt a hand on his arm.
He looked up and saw Tuval. The commander was frowning. He excused himself from the conversation with
Chelubi.
“Ben. Something the matter?”
“I was expecting to hear from Collins by now.”
“So contact him.”
“I tried.” Tuval held up his communicator. “He doesn’t answer. Nor does Dr. Boyce.”
Which pretty much ruled out mechanical failure; the odds of two communicators breaking down at the same time were pretty infinitesimal. What was going on? Easy enough to find out, Pike knew.
“Let’s have Liyan contact sickbay. See if we can get an estimate on how much longer the doctor’s going to be.” Pike turned and saw that the tallith was still deep in conversation with Gurgis.
“No, sir,” Tuval said.
“No, sir?” Pike turned back around. “What’s that mean?”
“It means I talk to Liyan. And you get back to Magellan. Smith?”
The lieutenant suddenly appeared at his side. Where she’d come from, Pike had no idea.
“Sir?” she asked.
“Get the captain back to the shuttle. Try not to make a scene unless you have to, but—”
“Whoa. Hold on a second, Ben.” Pike shook his head. “You’re overreacting.”
“No, sir. I’m following the manual. Standard landing-party protocol. You know it as well as I do.”
Pike hesitated. Tuval was right. In potentially hostile territory, get the commanding officer to safety. Rule number one. Pike had made that call himself, several times, back in the day. But—
His communicator chirped.
Pike smiled. “That’s probably Boyce now.” The captain reached into his back pocket and flipped the communicator open.
“Pike here.”
“Enterprise. Number One. We have just received a transmission from Hexar. ”
She filled him in on the situation.
“Not Kritos?”
“No, sir.”
“Damn.” Pike frowned. What had happened to Kritos? A thousand possibilities ran through his head, none of them good. Kritos not aboard Hexar ?
This changed everything, as far as he was concerned.
“I want you to contact Starfleet,” Pike said. “Talk to Admiral Noguchi personally. Tell him that Kritos has been replaced.”
“Aye, sir.”
“In the meantime, hold position. Do nothing to aggravate the situation. We’re returning to Enterprise at once.”
“Captain Pike?”
He looked up and saw Liyan.
“There is a problem?” she asked.
“There is. One second, Number One.” Pike lowered the communicator to his side. “Klingons. You should be picking them up on your sensors momentarily.”
“Klingons.”
“Yes. A battle cruiser. I’m afraid we need to return to Enterprise immediately. We—”
“Yes. The battle cruiser.” Liyan reached out a hand; her fingertips brushed against the skin on the back of his wrist. Her eyes found his. “We have been tracking the ship for some time now, Captain. I assure you, there’s no cause for alarm.”
All other conversation in the room faded away. Pike suddenly felt himself the center of attention, felt all eyes in the room on him, on Liyan.
“No cause for alarm,” he said.
“No.” She smiled. “And there is certainly no need to rush back to your ship before finishing our discussions.”
Pike felt the frown on his face soften.
Perhaps he was overreacting just a little. Ben was, too, wasn’t he? Maybe overcompensating, being extra careful, because he was wearing the shunt? After all, he’d come there to accomplish a specific task, to talk to Liyan, and that task wasn’t accomplished, so—
Something in his hand vibrated. Pike looked down and saw the communicator.
Enterprise . Number One. He’d forgotten all about them. How …
He looked up at Liyan.
Pheromones.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and took a step back from her. “I need to speak with my ship.”
Pike flipped open the communicator again. The light on it was flashing red. No signal. What—
“It is I who must apologize, Captain Pike. I had hoped to avoid this scenario. Tactician.” She spoke, without turning, to an Orion Pike hadn’t noticed before, who stood at her shoulder.
“Majesty.”
“Launch the projector. Immediately.”
“Yes, Tallith.”
She snapped her fingers, and two of her guards stepped forward.
“Take the humans to the medical level,” she said, gesturing to her guards, one of whom reached down to draw his weapon even before she finished speaking. “Treatment Room C. Collect the others there, and wait for further—”
The skin on the guard’s arm suddenly blistered and blackened and burned away.
“Down!” someone shouted in Pike’s ear, Ben’s voice. The captain did as he was told and dove to the floor. A phaser beam cut through the air above him; a second later, one of the ceiling support beams crashed to the floor, raising a cloud of dust, cutting them off from the tallith and her guards and most of the others in the room as well.
“Captain!”
He turned and saw Tuval holding his weapon. Ross stood next to him. A handful of bodies surrounded the two of them. One was Smith’s. She wasn’t moving. No surprise.
Half her head was missing.
“We have to move, sir,” Tuval said. “Now.”
Pike drew his own phaser and nodded toward the exit.
“Magellan,” he said. “Let’s go.”
SEVEN
Get him back.” Number One stood over the communications console, glaring down at Garrison. “Lieutenant—”
“Trying, sir.” He was, indeed, little doubt of that. In a variety of admirably inventive ways, all of which Spock was able to monitor, in real time, through the read-outs at his station. None of those methods, unfortunately, had met with any success.
Captain Pike cut off in mid-conversation. The Orion ship had failed to respond to any of their attempts to hail it. A disturbing situation. Spock could see no reason for their failure to communicate. Data coming in from long-range sensors showed the ship to be functioning normally; he could not conceive of why—
The data on his console changed.
Spock raised an eyebrow. “Long-range sensors indicate the approach of two vessels. Closing rapidly.”
“Type and position,” Number One said.
Spock opened his mouth to answer, and the two vessels, all at once, became three.
“One moment.” He overrode standard processor power distribution, diverting all nonessential system resources to the sensor arrays. The data continued to fluctuate. Instrument error? He checked the maintenance logs, noted the last calibration had occurred early that morning, zero-hundred-ten ship’s time. Performed by Crewman Reilly, C Shift. Spock trusted Reilly’s work; he had spent long hours training the man. His immediate working hypothesis was that this was not a case of equipment malfunction.
“Mr. Spock?” Number One prompted.
“I am receiving contradictory data from Enterprise ’s instruments, which I am attempting to resolve. One moment, please.”
Interstellar anomalies, random subspace energy fluctuations, even certain types of electrically charged space dust, all of these things and half a hundred others were capable of disrupting the delicate energy patterns Enterprise ’s sensor arrays used to make their calculations. Spock reset the array, rebooting each of the system’s processors in turn—a thirty-second process, at the end of which data began arriving at his station once more. The exact same type of contradictory data. Puzzling. Frustrating.
“Spock?” Number One said again, her voice rising.
“My apologies, Commander. Data are still in flux.” Which was an understatement; according to his instruments, the ships were changing physical shape from nano-second to nano-second. Impossible, of course.
And then, all at once, the readings stabilized.
“Two Klingon warbirds,” Spock announced. “Moving at five
-point-two c, on apparent intercept course.” He looked up and met Number One’s gaze. “Readings appear similar to those observed on Starbase Eighteen’s sensor display.”
“Before the attack there.” Number One frowned. “Same ships.”
Spock nodded. “It appears so.”
“Red alert, Lieutenant Hardin,” Number One snapped, stepping down to the command chair. “All decks.”
“Red alert, aye,” Hardin said with a certain degree of satisfaction. She punched a button on the console in front of her, and a klaxon began sounding.
Spock reconfigured his workstation, splitting the display in front of him. He assigned current sensor readouts to the right half of the screen; on the left, he began gathering data from the array’s storage buffers.
“They didn’t come from Adelson,” Number One said, stepping up next to him.
“Correct,” Spock said.
“So where did they come from?” Number One asked.
“Uncertain. I am currently attempting to plot possible points of origin.” Spock set up the necessary variables within the navigation subprocessor; he began flowing in the data, streaming them from both the ship’s memory banks and current sensor input.
“They could have been hiding in the Borderland,” Hardin said.
Spock replied without turning. “You are suggesting that the Orions and the Empire have made an alliance?”
“It’s possible,” Hardin said.
Possible, Spock thought. But unlikely. He was about to point out why when the data on his screen changed yet again.
“The Orion vessel is moving,” he said. “Accelerating to point-seven-three light speed. The Klingons are changing course to follow.”
“On screen,” Number One said.
“Switching display,” he said, and a second later, the Orion vessel—a blue dot superimposed on the sector map—and the Klingon vessels—two orange dots so close together that they read as a single image—all headed deeper into the Borderland.
The Orion ship suddenly executed a 180-degree turn. The Klingons again moved to follow.
“We’ve got to go after them,” Hardin said.
Number One ignored her. She turned back to Garrison.
