Star Trek: The Children of Kings

by David Stern

  It was later than he thought. Hoto was sleeping when he finally arrived. Boyce washed up as best he could, lay down on one of the diagnostic cots, and closed his eyes.

  He wondered what progress the lieutenant had made in determining their location, in determing Enterprise ’s. Were they still in the Borderland, still in reach of a Federation outpost? Or were they going to have to locate a Klingon base and try to get them the information about the Orions and the technology that had been used to frame the Empire? Would the Klingons believe them? In Boyce’s experience—

  Someone cried out.

  Boyce turned in Hoto’s direction. It had to be her; there was no one else on the wing. He squinted in the darkness. The day after an amputation, she could still be experiencing considerable pain. He watched her a moment. She didn’t move. On the other hand, she could also just be having a nightmare. The day after an amputation, that wouldn’t be entirely unexpected, either.

  He lay back down.

  Hoto cried out again. A muffled cry, as if she had her face buried in the pillow. Boyce sat up and threw the sheet off. He ought to check on her; better safe than sorry. He got out of bed, walked to the light sensor by the door, and ran a hand over it. Low-level illumination filled the room. He walked over to Hoto’s cot and activated the diagnostic sensor. Her vitals looked fine. She was sleeping peacefully now, hands—one prosthetic, one her own—folded across her chest. Good.

  He turned to go, and she cried out again.

  But her mouth didn’t move, which was when Boyce realized that the noises he’d been hearing hadn’t been coming from her at all.

  They were coming from outside, from the main hall of the medical wing.

  Boyce slid on his clothes, entered the code Hoto had pirated for him on the door keypad, and stepped quietly out into the hall.

  He heard the noises again, right away.

  They were coming from the far end of the hall, to his right, from one of the three smaller treatment rooms there. Not Deleen’s old room; that was still empty. Not the one on the other side of the hall, either: the noises came from the room directly in front of him. The keypad there was lit up. Boyce took a step closer and pushed at the door. It didn’t give.

  A loud noise came from inside. Boyce put his ear to the door; he could hear someone bellowing. Screaming, almost. Boyce couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Crying for help?

  He reached for the keypad and then, about to enter the pirated code, paused.

  Was this any of his business? Was this safe? Should he go get one of the guards? Those questions and about half a dozen others ran through his mind quickly, and then he dismissed them. This was a medical wing. He was a doctor.

  He hit the keys. Zeph zeph gramma. The door opened. The room lights were on but dimmed. He took a step forward.

  There was a bed in front of him; it looked as if there was someone lying in it. He squinted into the darkness but couldn’t make out any details.

  Then his eyes adjusted to the light, and his pupils widened in surprise.

  There was someone on the bed all right.

  That someone was a Klingon.

  TWENTY

  Dr. Yang arrived and gave Spock a hypo that instantly reduced the swelling in his ankle.

  “This mysterious building,” Vlasidovich said as they set off down the corridor. “Why do you not tell me about it? Why do you go off on this midnight expedition?”

  “We thought to determine what the building was before coming to you,” Spock lied. He exchanged a glance with Number One. Had they, in fact, done so? Discovered Building 8’s purpose? He wasn’t certain. Biological warfare ran counter to everything the Federation stood for; the idea that such a project could be conducted under the auspices of Starfleet …

  “Regardless. This is not customary procedure. We will have to discuss later.” Vlasidovich didn’t seem overly concerned. Spock could understand why. Black Snow? In their possession? In the captain’s position, that would be his priority as well.

  “The responsibility for the expedition is mine, sir,” Number One said. “It was my idea.”

  She was attempting to shift the blame, and any associated punishment, onto herself. Spock would have none of it.

  “No, sir,” he said. “In fact, it was a joint decision to conduct the survey in this manner. We both—”

  “We have Mr. Tyler to thank,” Vlasidovich said. “He was on duty. Noticed unusual sensor readings about an hour ago. A trail of energized particles, traveling right alongside ship. Unusual, I said. Suspicious. So I come to bridge, we analyze exhaust, we note similarity to engine particles emitted by Klingon ships, which is when I go to find my science officer.” He glanced sideways at Spock. “Proves more difficult than I am expecting.”

  “Yes, sir,” Spock said. “I apologize.”

  “As I said, we discuss later.” Vlasidovich gestured down the corridor. “Ah—we are here.”

  Here was the shuttlebay observatory, the control center for all bay operations. Vlasidovich preceded them through the door, into the observatory proper, a square room six meters a side that jutted out into the bay proper, a good nine meters above its floor. Instrument consoles and computer stations dotted the room’s perimeter. A significant portion of the forward wall was transparent aluminum.

  Lieutenant Tyler was seated at one of the consoles. Lieutenant Hardin stood by the far wall. Both turned as they entered.

  “We have it, sir,” Tyler said. “Bringing it in now by tractor beam.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Tyler,” Vlasidovich said, and smiled.

  Spock glanced past the captain, through the observatory window, down toward the bay doors. A ship was indeed coming into the bay.

  A craft as long as a standard Federation shuttle but half again as wide and significantly more tapered. The outside of the craft was a highly reflective metal of some sort. Its color seemed somehow to shift between a lustrous gold and a duller yet somehow brighter white.

  There was writing on the side. Klingon writing. qIj ped— Black Snow.

  “Interesting-looking ship,” Vlasidovich said.

  Number One nodded. “Indeed.”

  “Closing bay doors,” Tyler announced. “Pressurizing shuttlebay.”

  “Good.” Vlasidovich nodded. “Lieutenant?” He gestured toward Hardin, who keyed in something on the console in front of her.

  A second later, a squad of a half-dozen security personnel fanned out into the room, weapons at the ready.

  Vlasidovich leaned over the console himself and spoke directly into it. “Commander of Klingon vessel. You are aboard Federation starship Enterprise . Please come out with your hands raised.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Commander of Klingon vessel,” Vlasidovich said again. “Please—”

  A line appeared in the ship’s previously seamless exterior. It ran from the top portion of the hull down underneath the main fuselage.

  Part of the hull folded in on itself. A figure rose from the vessel. A Klingon. He looked around, no trace—and Spock thought this strange—of either anxiety or belligerence visible on his face.

  “That’s Captain Kritos, I think,” Number One said. “From the Hexar. ”

  “I think you’re right,” Tyler said. Spock thought so, too.

  “Interesting,” Vlasidovich said.

  It was indeed. Perhaps Vlasidovich had been right, Spock thought. Perhaps Kritos was part of a dissident faction within the Empire. Perhaps that was why he had been dismissed from command. Perhaps he was bringing the Federation Black Snow as evidence of his goodwill. Perhaps …

  “Sir.” Hardin spoke up. “Just occurred to me. Is it possible that this is just a distraction? I mean, given how easily we picked it up, how they’re not even putting up a fight …”

  “You make an interesting point, Lieutenant.” Vlasidovich said. “Please show me sensor readout of surrounding space, if you could, on monitor.”

  “Aye, sir,” Hardin replied.

  The
re was a console to the right of the observation window. Hardin reached to begin reconfiguring it to bring up the requested information.

  “Something’s happening,” Tyler said.

  Spock’s attention—drawn momentarily to Hardin and her efforts to work the standard science-department interface—returned to the Klingon ship below, where a second black line was appearing in the hull, this one toward the rear of the ship.

  “Somebody else in there,” Tyler announced. “Picking up life signs now.”

  The hull began to unfold once more.

  “Space around us looks clear, sir,” Hardin said to Vlasidovich. “No trace of any other Klingon ships in the immediate area. Of course, if they’re cloaked …”

  “Understood, Lieutenant,” Vlasidovich said. “Maintain vigilance, please.”

  “Aye, sir,” Hardin said.

  Spock nodded as he looked over the incoming telemetry; he saw nothing unusual there, either. Lieutenant Hardin’s concern seemed to him unwarranted. They were several parsecs from the Borderland now, a long distance from practical operating range for an isolated Klingon vessel. Still …

  He began calibrating the long-range sensors as well, to scan for the presence of particles similar to those emitted by the Klingon shuttle.

  “Second figure leaving the vessel,” Tyler announced, in a matter-of-fact way. “Captain,” he said then, in an entirely different tone of voice.

  “Yes?” Vlasidovich replied.

  “Captain,” Number One said, and then she laughed.

  “What?” Vlasidovich repeated, a note of annoyance in his voice.

  Spock looked up from the console.

  Vlasidovich was staring out the observation-bay window now, a most peculiar expression on his face. “Captain?” he said.

  Spock looked out the window as well.

  Christopher Pike stepped down from the Klingon shuttle and started walking toward them.

  BOOK III

  KRONOS

  TWENTY-ONE

  You can lower those, I think,” Pike said to the three security guards who were staring at him, open-mouthed, their phasers still pointed at Kritos, who was regarding them with an expression halfway between amusement and anger.

  “Captain Pike,” one of them said. McLaughlin, that was the man’s name. The other two were Mears and Staton. It was all coming back to him now—slowly. Very slowly indeed. He felt as if he’d been away forever.

  “Captain Pike.” He nodded. “That’s me.” He took a deep breath and allowed himself a small, tight smile. A week inside the cramped confines of Kritos’s shuttle, a week smelling his own sweat and worse …

  He wanted a shower. He wanted food—honest-to-God, human food. If he had to eat gagh one more time . . .

  The doors to the shuttlebay slid open again, and Number One walked through, followed a heartbeat later by Spock, Lieutenant Tyler, and … Dmitri?

  Number One was smiling. He’d rarely seen that expression on her. Spock was smiling, too. That Pike had never seen before.

  “Sir! How …” Number One stopped a few meters away, looked at the shuttle, at Kritos, and then back at him. She took another step forward. Pike thought for a second that she was going to hug him.

  “Long story,” he said.

  “I don’t doubt it. It’s good to see you, sir.”

  “Good to see you, too,” Pike said, looking around the shuttlebay, catching as many eyes as he could. “Good to see everyone. To be back home.”

  Spock, he saw, was no longer smiling. Dmitri, though …

  Vlasidovich stepped forward, shaking his head. “Ah. I am surprised, and yet … I am not surprised. Christopher Pike cheats death one more time.”

  “No cheating involved. Just a lot of luck.” The two men shook hands.

  “And you bring us a prize,” Vlasidovich said, gesturing toward the Klingon shuttle. “Black Snow. Tell me how you did this.”

  “I didn’t.” He was about to turn and motion Kritos forward to explain, when, over Dmitri’s shoulder, he saw Chief Pitcairn coming toward him.

  The man was crying. He stepped past Dmitri, and before Pike could do anything about it, grabbed him in a bear hug and lifted him off the ground. And held him there.

  “Chief,” Pike said after a few seconds. “You can put me down now.”

  “Yeah. I could.” Pitcairn sniffed.

  But he didn’t. Not right away, at least.

  “Damn it, Captain,” the man said. “You keep pulling stunts like this, I’m going to lose the rest of my hair.”

  “I think you’re gonna do that anyway,” Pike said.

  Pitcairn laughed.

  “What do we do with the prisoner, sir?”

  Pike turned and saw Ben Tuval’s second, Hardin—only, of course, she wasn’t second anymore; she was security chief now—standing next to Kritos. She had not lowered her phaser.

  Kritos’s expression had moved beyond annoyance, was verging on anger now. One thing Pike knew, after having spent the last week with him: you did not want to get him angry.

  “I said at ease, Lieutenant.” Pike sharpened his tone, speaking directly to Hardin. “He’s not our prisoner.”

  “He’s an alien hostile, in a systems-critical area of the ship,” Hardin said, and added, “Sir. Regulations clearly state—”

  Pike felt his own temper giving way just a little. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. Not Glenn. Dmitri.

  “Lower your weapon, please, Lieutenant. We have on our side numbers—yes? Ten to one, I believe. No. Eleven to one.”

  Hardin frowned but did as she was told. Obeyed Vlasidovich, not him. It was Pike’s turn to frown now. Two captains—strike that, two commodores; Dmitri had the extra insignia bars on his shirt, just as he did—one starship. Pike hadn’t thought that would be a problem, but now …

  Dmitri took two steps forward and stopped directly in front of Kritos.

  “I know of you. You are captain of Hexar, yes? Kritos?”

  “Yes,” Kritos growled. “And you are captain of Excalibur. Vlasidovich. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  The two glared at each other.

  “You—” Vlasidovich began.

  “You—” Kritos said at the same instant.

  Pike could see a round of name calling and general bad feeling was about to begin, so he stepped between the two of them.

  “I have an idea,” he said. “How about we get something to eat?”

  They had a lot to talk about, obviously. Everyone wanted to know how he’d survived, how he’d ended up with Kritos. Pike had to fill them in on that and more, what he knew now about the Orions and what he suspected. He needed Kritos to do the same. Then there was the matter of Starbase 18, what had really been going on there and who was behind the attack. Chief Pitcairn wanted to talk to him, too, in private. He was pretty insistent about it; Pike had a hard time putting him off. He wondered what was up with that; it wasn’t like Glenn to try to take advantage of their friendship that way.

  The point was, there was an awful lot to discuss, among an awful lot of people, and they might as well eat while they were doing all that talking. The problem was, Kritos didn’t want to leave the shuttlebay. Didn’t want to let the cloaking device out of his sight. Not even after Pike promised—and had Dmitri promise—that no one would go aboard the little ship to examine it in his absence, much less remove it from the craft.

  “You I trust,” Kritos said. “These petaQ …” He glared at Hardin and Vlasidovich. And everyone else in the shuttlebay, for that matter.

  Spock stepped forward. “It would be simple enough to bring food to you, sir. From the crew’s mess.”

  “The crew’s mess. Good idea.” Pike smiled. “How about one of Carpenter’s steaks? A big one.” He spread his thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

  “Steak?” Kritos bared his teeth. “This is a kind of meat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I will have steak, too, then.”

  Pike ordered his medium rare
; Kritos wanted his raw. Yang, who’d shown up to give Pike a quick physical and whose presence reminded the captain of Boyce, of Magellan and the crew members he’d lost, tried to talk to the Klingon about the health risks associated with consuming raw animal flesh. Kritos listened with growing annoyance. Pike was about to send Yang away to do something productive when he caught sight of Chief Pitcairn, standing in one corner of the bay and motioning to him frantically. Spock and Number One were standing alongside him.

  “Be right back,” Pike said to Kritos and Yang. The captain walked hurriedly over to his senior officers. “Well?”

  They all started talking at once.

  “There’s a bug—”

  “There’s a building—”

  “Your logs—”

  Pike held up a hand. “One at a time. Number One?”

  “I have to go first,” Pitcairn said.

  “You’ll get your turn.”

  “No. I have to go first.”

  Pike frowned. He’d known Glenn Pitcairn for fifteen years, had never known him to behave this way.

  “One minute, Chief,” Pike said, putting a little steel into his voice.

  “The ship’s computer is bugged,” Pitcairn said.

  “What?”

  “The ship’s computer is bugged.”

  Pike shook his head in disbelief. “That’s not possible.”

  “Nor is it true,” Spock said.

  Pitcairn turned and glared at the Vulcan. “Now, hold on a minute, Mr. Spock.”

  Spock shook his head. “Forgive me, Chief. I just had a moment to work with the system and detected no trace of the feedback circuit you mentioned earlier.”

  “Feedback circuit?” Pike asked.

  “Someone was spying on us,” Pitcairn said. “On everything happening aboard the ship. That circuit was there, Mr. Spock.”

  “Perhaps so,” Spock replied. “No longer.”

  The chief looked upset.

  Number One nodded sympathetically. “I believe you, Chief,” she said.