by David Stern
Boyce glanced over at Hoto. She looked as confused as he was.
“Yes. I would.”
“Then follow me.”
Boyce, with a last, perplexed look back at Hoto, did as he was told. He followed Liyan and the guards out of the medical wing and up through the ship. It wasn’t long before their route started to look familiar to him. They stopped in front of a door he recognized as well.
“Wait a second,” Boyce said. “These are your quarters.”
“They are.” The door opened. “After you, Doctor.”
“Why is the girl in your quarters?”
“Where else should she be?” Liyan smiled. “Deleen is my daughter, Dr. Boyce.”
He froze in the doorway, utterly flummoxed by the revelation. Liyan, experimenting on her own daughter.
The world around him faded, and the past, for a moment, came rushing back.
Mobile 7 was docked with the Osler ; Jaya was off somewhere in the larger ship, using/abusing Osler ’s recreational facilities, she and a half-dozen of the others Boyce and his team had rescued over the last few months. The doctor and his team were in the main lab, Boyce at the head of the conference table.
The fieldwork was done; the experiments had begun. Three weeks in, they’d already reached a turning point.
“Plants are one thing.” Neema, at the far end of the table, was shaking her head. “Whether or not the virus is going to work on people—”
“I wish you wouldn’t call it a virus.” Boyce’s tech, a young man named Korby, shook his head. “The connotations—”
“What should I call it?” Neema asked. “It walks like a virus, it replicates like a virus.”
“A vaccine,” Korby said. “I would prefer you call it a vaccine.”
Neema rolled her eyes.
“Outside this lab,” Boyce said. “Roger’s right, Neema. Virus is a bad choice. Vaccine is better. Splitting hairs, I know,” he said hastily, at the look on her face, “but it’s a difference worth stressing. That’s not the important thing, though. The important thing is where we are in the testing. Dr. Cadan?”
Boyce spoke now to the only Argelian in their presence, the only Argelian remaining, in fact, on the entire planetary reclamation mission. Cadan was in her late thirties, according to the records. She’d been an assistant health minister in the southern continent’s government, before Dezzla’s. She’d gotten the disease fairly early on, a milder version, before it mutated. Boyce wasn’t sure exactly what it had done to her—something disfiguring. Something that caused her to cover her face with a mask and every square inch of her body with a long-sleeved coverall, so that the only things showing were her hands and, through the mask, her eyes.
Boyce had learned to read those eyes over the last few years. Right now, underneath her mask, he would bet money Cadan was smiling.
“Thank you, Dr. Boyce,” Cadan said. “We only just finished running our data through the LeKarz about half an hour ago, so while I can share the results with you, I’m afraid in terms of a visual presentation—”
“Not necessary, Doctor,” Boyce said. “The results are what we’re interested in.”
“Of course. In brief”—she paged through a stack of flimsies in front of her—“the last round of tests confirms the efficacy of the virus. Excuse me, vaccine.” She glanced up at Korby. “We worked with three species of animal, widely varying taxonomies, widely varying mutations. We followed these species through two generations and simulated a third and fourth using the LeKarz. The virus eliminated all mutation in a single generation. No significant mutation reappeared in any of the subsequent generations.”
“That’s great news, Doctor.” Boyce smiled. Korby was smiling, too. So were technicians Cauley and Chapel, next to him. And Drs. Finch, Debausset, Melliver, and Staton. Everyone around the table, in fact, was smiling.
Everyone, that is, except Neema.
“No significant mutation.” She sat directly across the table from Cadan. She leaned forward now, and spoke directly to the Argelian. “What exactly does that mean?”
“No disabling mutations,” Cadan replied. “Nothing disfiguring, nothing that—”
“Could you be a little more specific?”
“Of course.” Cadan, Boyce could tell, was no longer smiling. “The erapod, for example. Dezzla had affected the plumage of the males; the feathers were shorter and by and large colorless in the infected groups. Females were choosing mates from uninfected populations or, more often, choosing not to mate at all. Species numbers were down—this is just an estimate—approximately fifty percent over a ten-year period. Injecting infected juveniles with the vaccine and then accelerating their development to sexual maturity, we found the plumage fully restored to species-normal in ninety percent of the individuals.”
“And the other ten percent?” Neema asked. “I assume that’s where the mutation cropped up.”
“That’s correct. In the other ten percent, plumage size was nominal, but there were color variations. Monochromatic display.”
“And were you able to determine why?”
Cadan sat a little straighter in her chair. “We have begun testing to narrow down the possible causes. I do believe that—”
“So the answer is no. No, you don’t know why this new mutation occurs.”
The two women glared at each other across the table.
“You are technically correct,” Cadan said finally. “We do not, as of yet, know why.”
“So three weeks’ worth of tests. Mostly positive tests,” Neema interjected, swiveling in her chair to face Boyce. “Based on that, you’re ready to start treating those kids out there like lab rats?”
Boyce stared at her a moment. Jaya’s face flashed before his eyes. So did the faces of those they’d been too late to save. The kids they’d rescued whom he’d watched die, those he’d sedated so they didn’t have to spend their last few hours in agonizing pain.
Was he ready to start testing?
“Not the terminology I would have chosen,” he said. “Lab rats. But yes. If the alternative is doing nothing, I am ready.”
Neema threw up her hands and uttered a series of curse words under her breath.
Boyce did his best to ignore her. “Let’s go around the table, get a sense of how everyone feels,” he said. “Show of hands.”
It wasn’t even close. Neema was the only dissenting vote, though Boyce thought he saw Dr. Cadan hesitate before raising her hand as well.
“The ayes have it,” he said, getting to his feet. “Let’s start preparing the protocol, people.”
“And the rats,” Neema said. “We ought to start preparing them, too.”
Boyce glared. He was about to take Neema to task—for the language, for the sentiment—when he realized that she was right. Insensitive but right. Preparing their lab animals was exactly what they had to do.
He, in fact, already had one particular animal in mind to talk to.
The guard shoved him.
“Hey!” Boyce glared at the Orion, who simply glared back.
“Move,” the guard said, and Boyce did.
Through the door and into the room where he and Liyan had eaten dinner the night before. The table was bare of food now. Deleen sat at one end of it. She stood as the tallith—her mother—entered. Stood and bowed her head.
She looked up then and saw him. Her eyes widened. “Dr. Boyce,” Deleen said, “I am—surprised to see you.”
“The doctor was concerned for your welfare,” Liyan said. “Tell him how you are feeling.”
“I’m feeling fine.” She did indeed look better. Much better. Her skin color was a shade lighter; the veins on her arms were still noticeable but much less pronounced.
He noticed something else about the way she looked as well. There was absolutely no resemblance between the two of them. The tallith was a good bit taller, her features much stronger, more pronounced. Her skin color was different as well, several shades lighter. He would never have suspected the two
were related.
“I’m glad to hear it.” He looked past her to the tallith. “Your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been experimenting on your own daughter.”
“ Experimenting is not the word I would have chosen, Doctor,” Liyan said.
“What word would you have used?” he asked.
“It is irrelevant at the moment,” the tallith snapped. “Now that you have decided to assist us, the experiments, as you refer to them, will no longer be necessary.”
“Please.” Deleen laid a hand on her mother’s arm. “You must not agitate yourself. M’Lor said—”
“I know what M’Lor said. I will not be coddled.” She glared at her daughter a moment, and then the glare softened. “But you are right. I will not agitate myself unnecessarily.”
“You are laboring under a misunderstanding, Dr. Boyce,” Deleen said. “The procedures you refer to, I volunteered for them.”
“Why would you do that?”
“The Confederacy must survive. Everything else is secondary.”
“Even your life.”
“Especially my life.”
“Zandar will explain further.” Liyan motioned to the guard. “Take Dr. Boyce to the lab. Doctor, you will begin work immediately on replicating the serum. The facility and its personnel will be at your disposal.”
The guard stepped up alongside him.
“With your permission,” Deleen said. “I will accompany the doctor.”
“Of course.”
“This way, then.”
The guard nodded and fell into step behind them.
They walked in silence for a moment.
Then Deleen cleared her throat. “Dr. Boyce, your daughter.”
“What about my daughter?”
“I had not realized that she had been—that she was one of the—”
“One of the what?” Boyce snapped. “One of the people you killed?”
“Yes.” Deleen nodded. “I am truly sorry.”
Boyce, about to snap again, saw genuine sympathy in her eyes. “Thank you,” he said.
“It was a research facility, I understand. Starbase Eighteen.”
“Yes.”
“What was her function—”
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” Boyce said.
“Of course. I understand.”
A few seconds later, though, he realized he did.
“She was a scientist,” he said. “Dr. Jaya Wandruska. She and her partner were both stationed there.”
“I see.”
They walked on.
“They refused to let us have one, you know,” Deleen said.
“What?”
“A LeKarz. The tallith had attempted to trade for one earlier, offered a king’s ransom for it. We were refused.”
Boyced glared. “That doesn’t give you the right to steal it.”
“The tallith must not die, Doctor.”
“Everything dies,” Boyce said.
“Eventually. I suppose so. But not now. Now is a critical moment. If the Confederacy can hold together, we can resist the Empire. If not …”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little bit melodramatic?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Did you not hear the fighting these last few days? While you were in your cell?”
The fighting. Boyce remembered the way the ship had shook.
“The other clans are circling, Doctor. They sense the tallith’s weakness.”
Boyce remembered something else then, what had happened the night before, how Liyan had stopped his attack with ease. “She doesn’t seem in imminent danger of dying to me.”
“Perhaps not. But neither is she herself any longer. Or, rather, the self she needs to be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Boyce asked.
Deleen stopped walking and turned to face him. “We are Orions, Doctor. More than any other race in the galaxy, biology determines our destiny.”
Boyce was completely lost now. “Biology.”
“Yes. A biology we must someday overcome, if we are to regain the glories of our past.” She shook her head. “It is a terrible quandary the tallith faces. Terrible things she must do, for the good of our race.”
“Like Starbase Eighteen.”
“I’m not talking about Starbase Eighteen.” Deleen tapped on a segment of the bulkhead next to her, which slid aside to reveal a storage locker. That was when Boyce realized where they were. The lab. The converted shuttlebay.
“You’re not talking about Starbase Eighteen,” he said.
“No.”
“Then what—”
Behind her, the lab door slid open.
Deleen handed him a parka. “You are about to find out.”
FOURTEEN
The breadth of material Number One had gathered related to Kronos was impressive. Records of mineral transport from various deep-space mining facilities, images of Starfleet personnel traveling on civilian transports, letters of transit granting cargo freighters permission to pass through hostile territory. She had even gone so far as to purchase limited-time access to the Ferengi Commerce Authority central database, which tracked price, supply, and real-time demand for raw materials such as kreelite ore throughout the Alpha Quadrant.
The FCA also had visual recordings of most of the quadrant’s commodity exchanges. It was on one that she had uncovered the name “Kronos.” A notation, appearing momentarily on the display screen of a data slate belonging to a merchant who had subsequently purchased forty-six tons of raw kreelite from the Hazzard Mining Confederacy. The notation had been on the screen for but a second before being erased; long enough, though, for the Ferengi to capture it.
Having been through the entire stack of flimsies now—as well as two cups of tea Number One had prepared for him—Spock felt his first, instinctual association was correct. The word referred to the English transliteration of the name for the Klingon home world, Q’nos. There were other possibilities, of course—Kronos as in time, Kronos as in the father of the ancient Earth gods, the grandfather, as it were, of all sentient creatures, Kronos as an English transliteration for the Ferengi kronner, a coin of precious metal used in certain sectors of the galaxy where credit was not welcome—but evidence suggested otherwise.
Most convincing of all in that regard were the personnel records Number One had gathered, a large number of whom had direct experience with the Klingon Empire, starting with Commodore Higueras, who had served in the border patrol for years before transferring back to Starfleet Headquarters. His second-in-command, Lieutenant Patrice Njomo, had an impressive record of her own, vis-à-vis the Klingons. She had been part of the team that had attempted to rescue the UFP hostages aboard the Klingon heavy cruiser Torg, the ship whose subsequent destruction had led directly to the Gorengar crisis.
Then there was Dr. Tomas Nieldstrom, an expert in the history of the early Empire, who had been a guest lecturer at Starfleet Academy during Spock’s time there. There was Dr. Andreas Corzine, whose voice Spock had briefly heard on the salvaged recording from Starbase 18, who twenty years before Gorengar had been part of an exchange program between the most prominent Klingon and human medical academies and who had been, according to Starfleet records, the UFP’s most well-regarded specialist in interspecies battlefield medicine.
And then there was the transport of materiel to Starbase 18, the delivery of four Alpha-class power cores to 55-Hamilton, cores that—according to transport manifests—were intended for Building 8. Which Spock assumed referred to the mysterious, unaccounted-for structure on the surface of 55-Hamilton.
What it all added up to he was still not sure.
Spock set the flimsy aside and looked up. Number One had remained standing as he flipped through the flimsies, staring out the ship’s porthole, her back to him. She turned around now to face him.
“Finished?”
“Yes.”
“So what are they up to?”
“They?”
“The people in charge of this project. The people who tampered with the Archives.” She sat down next to him on the couch and straightened the stack of flimsies. “I keep this material in a storage locker in the sleeping alcove, by the way. The combination is ‘Kronos.’ If anything happens to me …”
“You believe you are in danger here? Aboard Enterprise ?”
“Tampering with the Archives is a court-martial offense, Mr. Spock. I don’t think we should be under any illusions about what these people are capable of.”
“These people.” Spock leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers together. “Who exactly are ‘these people’?”
She shrugged. “A faction within Starfleet. A cabal of officers, disgruntled politicians … no way of knowing for certain.”
Spock nodded. There was no shortage of individuals and groups, both within and outside the Starfleet apparatus, who were convinced that Gorengar—the treaty—had been a huge mistake, from both a moral and a tactical perspective.
“Of course, most politicians—most Starfleet officers, too, for that matter—aren’t capable of performing stunts like erasing data from the Archives. They need a little help to manage that kind of thing.”
“Covert operations,” Spock said.
“Exactly.”
“Such work is typically the bailiwick of Starfleet Intelligence.”
“Yes, it is.”
“This complicates matters.”
“Yes,” she said. “It certainly does.”
For one thing, it ruled out contacting T’Koss and informing her of their suspicions, sharing Number One’s discoveries, because if Starfleet Intelligence was involved, they would certainly be monitoring communications to and from the Archives.
For another …
“I had thought earlier,” he said, “that we should share our suspicions with the captain.”
She hesitated a second before responding. “I’m not entirely certain that’s a good idea.”
Spock nodded. “I am forced to agree.”
Number One walked over to the table and picked up the stack of flimsies. “I’m going to put this away. Back in a second.”
