by David Stern
“T’Koss,” he began.
“I am sorry, Spock. I must end our conversation. I am expected at the reception.” Once more, she avoided eye contact; he understood then that there would be no point in further questioning.
He raised his right hand and formed the Vulcan salute. “Live long and prosper, T’Koss.”
She returned the salutation. “Peace and long life.” The screen went black.
Puzzling. Disturbing.
He had contacted T’Koss in the hope of solving one mystery, only to encounter a second. A query regarding Starbase 18? Involving what, specifically? And made by whom?
Spock rose from his chair and sought the sanctity of meditation to focus his thoughts.
NINE
Boyce got to his feet.
Someone was coming. Several someones. Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside his cell.
The doctor smoothed back his hair, arranged his features into what he hoped was a suitably menacing scowl, and folded his arms across his chest. Collins’s blood still stained his shirt; there were other stains on his clothes as well. Dirt. Grease. From being dragged halfway across the ship. And he stank. Good God, he stank. He needed a shower and fresh clothes.
He needed a weapon.
He needed to take at least one of these people with him—Gurgis was his top choice—when he died.
The energy curtain—a force field of green light that colored the corridor outside his cell a pale, sickly shade of green—switched off. Its ever-present hum stopped.Boyce heard noises from elsewhere in the ship. The first time in a day, at least. He smelled fresh—relatively fresh, at least—air.
Two Orions stepped into his cell. Males. Big ones.
But not Gurgis. Boyce was disappointed.
He’d woken up in there after Gurgis’s attack, after the man had killed Collins. How much time had passed Boyce didn’t know exactly. A few days, he guessed; he had no way to record the passage of time—no meals, no visitors, no sensory input of any kind. Just the gun-metal gray walls of the cell, the sickly green of the corridor outside, the hole in the floor that served as his toilet, and the tap that supplied him water.
There had been three interruptions to the monotony.
The first had come a few hours after he’d woken up, when a handful of Orions ran past his cell, panicked looks on their faces. Boyce had screamed at them to stop, to let him out. Anyone running from the powers-that-be on this ship had to be a friend of his, but they hadn’t even once glanced in his direction. Part of their haste was understandable—the ship was under attack. The doctor had felt it shake with the impact of weapons fire more than once since he’d awakened, felt the sudden ebb and flow of gravity characteristic of a ship engaged in battle. Enterprise, he had thought, and began counting down in his mind the time (minutes, he suspected, not hours) that would pass before he was rescued. Until Captain Pike or Commander Tuval appeared at his cell door, smiling, and let him out.
But the minutes became hours, and the hours days, and he realized that the battle, if it even was with Enterprise or some other Federation ship, had not gone the way he’d hoped.
The second interruption had come some time later, after the doctor had woken and fallen asleep twice more. Petri appeared in the corridor, out of breath himself, accompanied by two guards who looked around nervously as he talked.
“My apologies, Dr. Boyce. After the incident—the attack—we moved you here for your own safety. Gurgis. He—his clan—”
“Get me out of here,” Boyce said.
“I’m sorry to say it isn’t entirely safe yet.”
“I don’t care.”
“I will be back,” Petri said. “I will be back.”
The man had run off then, before Boyce had a chance to say a word, to ask any of the myriad questions running through his mind, though Petri did indeed, as he had vowed, return later … in a manner of speaking.
Gurgis brought him. The third interruption.
Boyce heard the man coming before he saw him, heard heavy, ominous-sounding footsteps over the din of the energy curtain’s generator. The giant had appeared in the hall, carrying something in his hand. It was only when he’d turned to face Boyce that the doctor realized what it was.
Petri. Or, rather, the little man’s severed head.
Gurgis laughed then and tossed it aside, sent it tumbling down the corridor in one direction, as he turned and walked off in the other.
Boyce had stood there a moment, legs trembling, wondering what sort of madness he had fallen into. There was some kind of infighting going on aboard the ship, obviously. Clan wars, a struggle for power, for dominance, among the Orions themselves. Gurgis on one side and Petri—and the tallith?—on the other.
They really were savages, he thought. Sex-crazed, blood-lusting savages.
Well, if it was blood they wanted …
“Back,” one of the guards growled, gesturing with his weapon. Boyce had stepped to the front of the cell when the curtain lowered; they obviously didn’t want him there.
He glowered and stood his ground.
“Back!” the guard snapped, preparing to raise his weapon again.
Boyce prepared to move.
Part of the training Starfleet had put him through before he’d been allowed into the service. Hand-to-hand combat. Boyce was under no illusions about his ability, particularly given the fact that he hadn’t eaten in several days, but still …
He had the element of surprise here. The last thing these guards would expect would be for the old guy in front of them to—
The guards stepped aside. Liyan entered the cell.
“What do you want?” he asked her.
“I came to apologize. For your treatment these last few days. It was for your own safety, I assure you.”
Boyce grunted. The tallith wore a military uniform; he was half expecting to see Klingon insignia on it. The two—Empire and Confederacy—had made common cause: the attack on Starbase 18 was proof. He wondered if Enterprise had found out.
“Order has been restored.”
“Wonderful. Where’s Captain Pike? And the rest of the landing party?”
“You must be hungry. The guards will take you to more comfortable quarters, and then—”
“Where,” he interrupted, drawing the word out so it was two syllables, “is Captain Pike?”
Liyan’s eyes flashed. Clearly, she was not used to being interrupted. “Your captain is dead.”
“What?”
“Not something I intended, believe me. An accident, more than anything else. It was my hope that I could obtain his—and your—cooperation with the matter at hand.”
Boyce, almost without being aware of doing so, sat back on the cot. Captain Pike dead. He felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach.
“Dr. Boyce.”
He looked up. Liyan was standing over him.
“I apologize. I sympathize—empathize—with your loss. But time is pressing. And we have much to discuss.”
“No, we don’t.”
“You’re wrong about that.”
“Really?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Liyan motioned to one of the guards behind her. He left the room, returning almost immediately with yet another guard, much smaller, whom he suddenly shoved forward. The smaller guard stumbled and collapsed onto the cell floor, which was when Boyce realized the smaller guard was, in fact, not a guard at all.
It was Lieutenant Hoto.
Boyce fell to his knees and rolled her over.
She was still in her Starfleet uniform—what was left of it, at least. The tunic was burned in several places, torn off at the sleeves. She was barefoot. She stank worse than he did.
Black-and-blue marks all over her face. She’d been beaten. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. She was wounded. A phaser burn about four inches long on the upper part of her left arm, a bad one. The flesh was black. The wound was infected, oozing. The skin around it was alternating shades of blue and red.
&
nbsp; He looked up at the tallith. For a second, he was too angry to speak. He got control of himself.
“What have you done to her?”
“Nothing. Neither I nor any of those loyal to me would ever perform such atrocities. When the Singhino attacked—”
“You killed those people at Starbase Eighteen.” He got to his feet again and advanced on her. “What was that, another accident?”
One of the guards stepped forward. “Back, human,” he said.
“Doctor, please.” Liyan shook her head. “I will explain what occurred at Starbase Eighteen to you when we dine. At present—”
“Dine.” He shook his head and gestured toward Lieutenant Hoto. “I’m not dining with you. This woman needs treatment. Now.”
The tallith nodded. “Yes. And we need to speak.”
“It’s like that, is it?”
“It’s exactly like that.”
He felt his blood begin to boil over again.
“What is it you want?” Boyce asked.
“Just to talk. As I said.”
He doubted that. But what kind of choice did he have in the matter?
“Fine. Take us to the treatment center, and then—”
“We can treat the woman,” Liyan said, “while you talk to me.”
“No.” Boyce got to his feet. “I want to see this done right. It won’t take long.”
“How long?”
“An hour at most, to get her stable.”
That was a lie. He had no intention of helping this monster with anything.
“You can have forty-five minutes.” She turned to the guard. “Take them to the treatment facility, then bring the doctor to my quarters. Forty-five minutes.”
The guard nodded. “Forty-five minutes, Tallith. It shall be as you say.”
She left.
Boyce knelt down once more and helped Hoto to her feet.
The treatment took less time than expected. Mostly because he had to amputate Lieutenant Hoto’s arm. He had no choice in the matter. The infected tissue had to go, and he had nothing to replace it with. No regen gel.
He left Hoto lying on a screened-off cot in one of the large treatment areas, doped up with enough provoline to keep her unconscious for at least the next couple of hours, and followed the guard, heading up through the ship this time. They moved down a nondescript corridor on the ship’s upper deck, up to a nondescript door, and on through. He tried to keep his anger in check the whole time.
That anger, though, began to dissipate the second he saw the food.
Platters of it, bowls of it, laid out on a table the size of the one back in Enterprise ’s briefing room. His stomach rumbled.
“Dr. Boyce. Please join me.”
Liyan was at the table’s head; she wore now what she had worn when the Magellan landing party had first come aboard: a gray dress, a matching robe, a circlet of gold in her hair. She gestured to the seat nearest her.
Boyce took it, noting the presence of two other women in the room. Younger, beautiful, dressed—barely—in matching outfits. One stood at the tallith’s shoulder, a bottle in her hands. As Boyce approached, she poured from that bottle into Liyan’s glass and then into his.
The other woman pulled out his chair for him; as he sat, she pushed it back in. Her hair was long and dark. It brushed against the side of his neck, his shoulder.
Boyce wished he could have changed. Bathed.
“This is Vaya,” Liyan said, gesturing towards the dark-haired woman as she stepped back from the table. “And Nee’An. They will be serving us tonight.”
Boyce nodded hello to both. The dark-haired woman, Vaya, smiled slightly and stared straight into his eyes. She stared long enough that Boyce began to feel uncomfortable. He shifted in his chair.
“I think you’ll recognize some of these dishes,” Liyan said. “That one there, for instance.”
Boyce squinted across the table. “Is that tadeesh ?”
“It is. Not fresh, I’m afraid—that’s not a food that travels well, but …”
“I wasn’t aware it traveled at all.”
Vaya picked up the bowl and brought it to him. The smell brought back memories. His first few years on Argelius, he’d practically lived on this stuff. It couldn’t be the real thing, though, a bowl this big; the real thing was a delicacy.
“Please.” Liyan gestured. “Go ahead.”
Boyce struggled with his conscience for about two seconds. Then he nodded. Vaya filled his plate, and Boyce dug in. It was delicious, better than he remembered.
“More, Doctor?” Vaya asked.
“Please. I haven’t had tadeesh in—I don’t know how many years.”
“Seventeen, by my count,” Liyan said.
“What?”
“Argelius. That’s when you were last there. Isn’t it?”
Boyce did the math in his head. “That’s right. But how do you know about Argelius?”
“The work you did there—quite remarkable, Doctor. Bringing an entire continent back to life.”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
“Is it?” She sipped her drink. “When you arrived, the area was a radioactive wasteland. Seven years later, there were half a dozen populated settlements.”
“It took hundreds of people to do that.”
“But you laid the groundwork. You decoded the genomes. You fixed that which had been broken. The DNA of dozens of living creatures. Plants, animals … what you did there borders on the miraculous.”
“It’s science,” Boyce said. “Nothing miraculous about it.”
“Something you could repeat, then, I take it. Without too much difficulty?”
“What’s that mean?”
She smiled. “Eat first, Doctor. Then we can talk. Vaya”—she gestured to the girl who’d brought him the tadeesh —“will see to your needs.”
The girl stepped forward again and bowed her head. She was not, Boyce noticed, wearing a great deal of clothing.
“I am yours to command, Doctor,” she said, and met his eyes.
Boyce was suddenly acutely aware of her presence and his own reaction to it.
Pheromones.
He shoved his plate away.
“Let’s just cut to the chase,” he said, turning to Liyan. “What is it that you want from me?”
The smile stayed on Liyan’s lips, but all trace of amusement vanished from her eyes. “All business now, Doctor, is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Very well. Leave us,” she said to the two women, who bowed quickly and did just that. “You, too.” She spoke to the guard at the door.
“Majesty,” he began hesitantly. “I—”
“Leave!” Liyan said, getting to her feet. “Now!”
Boyce slid the knife at his place setting from the table onto his lap.
The man bowed and exited. Leaving the two of them alone. Himself and the woman who’d killed Jaya. And Pike. And close to a hundred other innocent people, give or take.
“Why did you attack Starbase Eighteen?” Boyce asked. “Was it for the LeKarz?”
“In a manner of speaking.” She sat back down; Boyce did, too.
“What’s that mean?”
“For the LeKarz … and for my people.”
“Your people. Seems like some of your people are not on the same page as you are.”
“The Singhino.” She practically spat the word out. “They are trapped in the old ways. The old patterns of thinking. Clan against clan. Whereas I seek something more for our people. All of our people. It scares them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Singhino—and many of the other clans—are scared. Fearful. They remain apprehensive that my attempts at restoring the glory of our Empire will end in disaster.”
Boyce remembered Hoto’s briefing on the shuttle; it seemed like a lifetime ago.
“You’re talking about the Second Empire,” he said.
She smiled. “Exactly. Under K’rgon, the Borderland was our
s. I would make it so again.”
Boyce understood now. “Which is where the alliance with the Klingons comes in.”
“Alliance? With the Klingons?” She looked amused. “What gave you such a ridiculous idea?”
“The attack on Starbase Eighteen, for starters.”
“The attack. Ah, of course. The sensor images. The Klingon warbirds.”
“That’s right.”
“They were manufactured.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. The Empire and the Orions—we are not allies, Doctor. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
Boyce wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not. Manufactured sensor images. He’d never heard of such a thing.
Liyan held up her glass, which had only a fingerful of the bright red liquid left in it. “You know what I am drinking?”
“No.”
“Firewine.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s a Klingon beverage. It’s become quite popular among my crew, among many of the Caju. Within the next few years, I expect it to become one of the most heavily traded commodities in this sector.” She set the glass down. “The Klingons are deliberately underpricing it now, selling it at a loss to ensure that it spreads. Trade to them is but another method of warfare. Their history is full of such examples, Doctor. Economic expansion, territorial aggrandizement . . . they plan to take over this part of space as well, no doubt. The entire Borderland will be theirs. Unless we stop them.”
“We.”
“The Federation. And the Orions. Working together.”
Boyce almost laughed. There was no we. Not after Starbase 18.
“You missed something,” he said.
“What?”
“Your little biography of me. You missed something. Someone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jaya,” Boyce said. “My daughter.”
It was the first time he’d spoken her name out loud since learning of the attack. Somehow, he managed to keep his voice from cracking.
“Your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t mentioned in any of the databases. Or in your personnel record.”
“She was from Argelius,” Boyce said. “I adopted her there.”
“I see. And this is relevant how?”
