Sand and Stars

by Diane Duane

  Before leaving his quarters, Sarek tapped softly on Soran’s door. Moments later, his aide emerged, also clad in dark clothes, with soft footwear. “The security alarms?” he whispered.

  “Disabled,” Sarek replied.

  The ambassador had visited the Freelan station many times, and knew precisely where to go. When they reached the doors that were labeledMAINTENANCE—NO ADMITTANCE in several languages, including Vulcan, Sarek stopped, motioning Soran to stay back. He tapped on the entry pad, and the portals shot apart.

  Sarek stepped into the maintenance area, Soran at his side. The young Vulcan halted suddenly at the sight of a surveillance vid unit, but the ambassador shook his head reassuringly. Thevalit was overloading the condition-recognition software to the point where it would not be on-line for the time of their visit.

  “We must move quickly,” Sarek said softly. (Even though there was no one in the area, the urge for silence remained, illogical though it was.) “Thevalit will not delay the security system indefinitely.” He led the way past a transporter room and into the nerve center of the station.

  The enormous room contained a gigantic computer system, black metal without decoration, identical to the one Spock had seen a generation before. Apparently the Romulans were conservative about changes in a technology that worked. Sarek nodded grimly. It was as he had conjectured.

  “Ambassador, you must know what you are looking for,” Soran said. “Otherwise you would not have been able to devise avalit program.”

  “Logical,” Sarek said, approvingly, seating himself before the closest comm link and taking out his tricorder. “You have deduced admirably. If my theory about the Freelans is correct, then you shall soon see their true identity for yourself.”

  “This system bears no resemblance to any in the Federation,” Soran said, watching as Sarek’s experienced hands flew over the tricorder controls, feeding in anothervalit program, this one designed to follow on the heels of the firstvalit. It would make all areas of the memory accessible to external control, and display on the visual monitors whatever was accessed.

  As the two Vulcans watched, random areas of memory began to appear on the screens. Soran’s eyes widened as he made out the characters. “That script…” he breathed. “Romulan!”

  “Indeed,” Sarek said. “As I expected. But I must capture more than random kitchen requisitions to justify our suspicions.” He held up the tricorder’s photo chip to the screen.

  “So the Freelans areRomulans?” Soran said slowly, obviously taken aback. At Sarek’s quick glance, the young Vulcan hastily composed his features.

  “Yes,” Sarek said. “They are Romulans. I have suspected it for a long time, but gaining proof has been difficult. Ah…personnel data banks. We are in.”

  Raw information began to flash across the screen—words in Romulan script, operating-system symbols, and numbers, all in a jumbled disarray. Hundreds of screens of data, most of it garbled, appeared in quick succession. Suddenly Sarek leaned forward and signaled the tricorder to backtrack through the images. A quick tap froze the output. Intently, he studied the scrambled data.

  “What is it?” Soran asked.

  “A name—one of the few Freelan names I would recognize. Do you read Romulan, Soran?”

  “No, sir. I will remedy the deficiency as soon as feasible,” the young aide promised. “What does it say?”

  Sarek indicated a name in flowing Romulan script. “Taryn,” he said, simply. “This is a list of Romulan officers, along with their ranks. Taryn is listed, if I am reading this correctly, as a wing commander.” The elder Vulcan raised an eyebrow. “A high-ranked Romulan officer indeed.” He continued recording data, studying it. Slowly, he made sense of the scrambled information. He generated a decoding algorithm in his mind, and mentally overlaid it on the jumble, seeing order amid chaos.

  Minutes later, he was reading it swiftly. Sarek scanned the shipping data first, noting with grim satisfaction that it, too, proved his theory. Military vessels from Romulus and Remus made regular voyages to Freelan, and Freelans voyaged to the Romulan worlds. Romulan officers were logged as being “detailed” to Freelan.

  Freelan also had a small fleet of birds-of-prey located in probe-shielded hangars that were camouflaged by the simple expedient of placing them beneath massive ice shelves, with roofs impregnated with selonite.

  The communications logs listed hundreds of subspace messages between the Romulan worlds and Freelan. Government communiqués listed Freelans on “missions” to various worlds, particularly Earth—and, nearly always, the Freelan merchant, diplomat, or scientist was accompanied by an aide with a Vulcan name.

  Sarek automatically memorized those names, knowing, however, that further checks would reveal that they—like Savel—werenot Vulcan citizens.

  None of the evidence Sarek uncovered was a direct link between the KEHL activity and the Freelans—or Romulans—but the ambassador found the circumstantial evidence damning.

  Without warning, a sudden, familiar sound made him freeze.

  Soran heard it, too. “Ambassador—a transporter beam!”

  “Attempt to distract the newcomers, while I disengage thevalits,” Sarek commanded, his fingers flying. Without a thought he abandoned his hope of copying further Romulan data banks. If he and Soran were caught here, spying, the Romulans would be within their rights to summarily execute them for espionage.

  Quickly, he injected the last of thevalits, the one designed to eradicate all evidence of his tampering. He could hear footsteps approaching from the direction of the transporter room as he leaped up, tricorder in hand, looking for a place to eliminate the evidence of his spying. Without the tricorder as evidence, he might be able to pretend to have awakened in the night, ill, and to have been searching for the station’s automated med center. There was little chance that he would be believed, but, without hard evidence, the Freelans might hesitate to take him into custody. Seeing a disposal unit, Sarek dropped the tricorder in and cycled it, not without a pang at the loss of his proof. Logic dictated, however, that he save himself.

  Glancing around him, the ambassador realized that the computer room was singularly devoid of hiding places. Silently, he resigned himself to being caught, and having to feign illness, when a loud crash sounded next door, in one of the engineering chambers that held banks of automated equipment.

  The approaching Freelans exclaimed—in Romulan!—and went to investigate. Peering out of the computer area, Sarek warily scanned the hallway; then he made a swift, soundless retreat back to the entrance. The ambassador knew that his young aide must have caused the crash that had distracted whomever had come to investigate the “malfunction.” Would Soran be able to escape, also?

  A second later Soran, soundless on his soft-soled shoes, hurried up beside him. Quickly, the two Vulcans left the maintenance area and returned to their quarters.

  Later, as he relaxed in the narrow bunk, the ambassador allowed himself a faint, ironic smile in the concealing darknesss.It is not endgame yet, Taryn, he thought.Today you may have had me in check, but mate is still a long way off.

  The next day, Sarek waited tensely for some indication that his late-night foray had been discovered, but apparently the lastvalit had been successful. Taryn displayed no indication of suspicion during the morning’s negotiating session.

  The ambassador was just beginning the afternoon’s session when Soran approached, a guarded expression on his normally calm features. “Ambassador? There are two messages coming in from Vulcan. They are…important.”

  Hastily, Sarek excused himself and went to his quarters to view them in private. The first was a written message from his wife that read, simply, “Come home if possible, please. Amanda.”

  Staring at it, the Vulcan experienced a rush of unease. Never, in over sixty years of marriage, had his wife ever interrupted him in the midst of a mission to ask him to return home. What could be wrong?

  His silent question was swiftly answered by the second mess
age, prerecorded by his wife’s physician, T’Mal. The graying Healer stared straight into the screen, as though she could see him. Her expression was calm, as usual, but the ambassador could discern a hint of sorrow in her eyes. “Ambassador Sarek, you must return home immediately. Your wife is gravely ill. I do not expect her to live more than another month…possibly less. I regret having to impart such news in this manner, but I have no choice. Return home immediately.”

  Two

  The ancient, stone-walled room was buried deep in the foundations of the huge fortress-manor on Qo’noS, the Klingon homeworld. Outside those age-darkened stone walls lay nothing but soil. The room had been tested, retested, and verified to be free of all recording or surveillance devices, which was why such a dank, dark room had been chosen for this particular meeting.

  Valdyr sat in one of the modern chairs that had been brought into the room, feeling the chill pluck at her body, even as the words she was hearing chilled her mind and soul. Hesitantly, she glanced up at her uncle, the esteemed Klingon ambassador, Kamarag, as he spoke forcefully to the officers assembled in the room, around the venerable, dagger-scarred table that had undoubtedly been here for hundreds of years.

  He is perilously close to treason,she thought, struggling to keep the shock she was feeling from showing on her face.

  The officers watched the speaker with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The soft lights from the lamps glimmered off oiled black leather and polished studs.

  “Warriors,” Kamarag was saying, his trained voice carrying such conviction that it was nearly hypnotic, “we have all seen what is happening to our Empire in the past months, since Praxis was destroyed. The foundations of our existence are being eaten away! If this continues, soon there will be no place for our race in this galaxy! The Romulans will overrun us, for we will have grown soft, and weak as females!”

  Valdyr, the only female present, glanced up at him, but was careful to conceal the resentment his words caused. Her uncle was the head of her family. When her father had been killed attempting to board and conquer the FederationStarship Enterprise, Kamarag had taken his widow and four children under his protection, providing for them, even sending Valdyr and her brothers to school.

  And last month, when her mother and eldest brother had been killed during one of the devastating meteor showers that had bombarded Qo’noS ever since the destruction of Praxis, Kamarag had taken Valdyr and her brothers to live with him in the ancestral home.

  Her uncle was the head of her family, and she owed him everything. If not for Kamarag, her brothers would never have been able to go to school and learn the skills necessary to serve aboard starships. They would all have been relegated to a backwater existence in some hamlet, grubbing for sustenance on land that was increasingly hostile to agriculture.

  Valdyr owed Kamarag unquestioning loyalty. Still, his sneering reference to her entire sex made her grind her back teeth. Her fingers clenched against her own armor. At the mention of the word “females,” one of the captains, Karg, cast Valdyr a leering glance.

  “Females have their place—but what should that place be? Remember who now sits in the chancellor’s seat of our government, my brothers! Awoman! Gorkon’s daughter, to be sure, but she is not Gorkon, as she has proved many times in the past days. Azetbur demands our loyalty, even as she opens her arms to Federation influence—influence which may well lead to Federationcontrol. Who among us, brothers, wishes to live under the heel of the Federation?”

  A concerted growl from the officers present was his only reply.

  Azetbur’s ascension to the chancellorship had given Valdyr the courage to continue her schooling past the age when most Klingons of her sex were relegated to the home, their only power whatever they could obtain by influencing the males in their lives. Valdyr respected Azetbur for attempting to forge a true and lasting peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.

  To hear her revered uncle denouncing the new chancellor secretly enraged the young woman. She glanced up at him as he spoke. Kamarag had been a formidable warrior in his youth, and his stance as he addressed these officers was that of a combatant throwing down a formal challenge.

  “Consider, my brothers!” he was continuing. “Consider what we must do, each and every one of us, to uphold our honor as warriors! Each of us must search his own heart to discover the best way to serve our Empire—even, should it prove necessary, by serving outside the strictures of official government policy. We must have the courage, the honor, thevalor to serve our Empire as warriors, as leaders—not merely as those who blindly follow orders given by our nominal superiors!”

  Valdyr’s eyes widened. Her uncle was skirting the boundary of advocating sedition…outright treason! Such talk was dishonorable! How could he speak so? Glancing over the faces of the assembled starship commanders, Valdyr saw that their eyes were fastened on the ambassador with an avid gleam—

  —all except one. Keraz had drawn back in his seat, and was shaking his head. Suddenly, the commander sent his gauntleted fist crashing down on the aged table so hard that the ironlike wood groaned in protest. “Kamarag, you go too far!” he growled. “I have no love for Azetbur, or her new policies, but I cannot disobey my oath as a Klingon officer! There are more renegades raiding across the Neutral Zone every day, and I have no intention of becoming one of them!”

  Valdyr had to restrain herself from leaping up and saluting the commander.

  Kamarag drew himself up, as though deeply offended—but his niece could tell that his indignation was feigned. “Keraz, you mistake me! I have said nothing about disobeying oaths. I have merely requested that each and every one of us assembled here today spend some time inthinking about our current situation, and how it may best be improved! There was no talk of oath-breaking in that!”

  Valdyr sighed inwardly as Keraz obviously lost some of his confidence. His brows drew together in consternation. “Yes, Keraz, were you not listening?” Karg growled sarcastically. “Did you stay out last night drinking and wenching, only to fall asleep just now anddream talk of oath-breaking? For there was none of that voiced today!”

  “Right!”

  “Karg is correct!”

  “We have our honor!”

  The other officers snarled their support of Karg’s rebuke. Keraz sat back in his seat. “Perhaps I misheard you, Kamarag,” he said grudgingly.

  The Klingon ambassador nodded, and within minutes the clandestine meeting had broken up. The moment she could do so without seeming suspect, Valdyr left her seat and hurried out into the corridor. She’d caught Karg ogling her with an appreciative eye, and she wanted to avoid the captain at all costs.

  But her way out of the deep cellars was blocked by the officers, who lingered, talking in groups, or waiting their chance to speak personally with Kamarag. Valdyr shrank back into an alcove that had once held wine casks.

  She’d been standing there long enough to grow chilled from the damp stone surrounding her on three sides when she heard two familiar voices. Kamarag and Karg were talking softly.

  “It went well, I thought…” Karg was saying. “Except for Keraz. He should be Azetbur’s personal servant, if he wishes to clean her boots with his tongue. I knew he would be trouble.”

  “We handled it, between us,” Kamarag said smugly. “Keraz may not join us—but he will not betray us to Azetbur. He has no love for her himself. Tell me, how did your latest raid go?”

  “The best yet,” Karg said. Valdyr could almost see him smacking his lips over the memory. “One of those mixed colonies, mostly Tellarites—you should have heard the females and the young ones squeal as we cut them down! There was very little worth taking on Patelva, true, but it was wonderful to feel the heat of battle and smell the richness of fresh-spilt blood again.”

  Valdyr swallowed. Klingons gloried in war and battle, true, but there was no honor in mowing down noncombatants. Karg’s words made her belly tighten with disgust.

  Suddenly a new voice broke into the conversatio
n. One of the other officers had come up to slap her uncle on the shoulder and congratulate him on a stirring oration. Peering out from her niche, Valdyr saw that the newcomer’s back blocked her from view, so she seized that opportunity to steal softly away down the corridor.

  Later that evening, as she sat in her chamber studying for her next examination in Federation Standard, the Klingon woman heard a knock on her door. After bidding the visitor enter, she saw it was her uncle. “Uncle!” she exclaimed, standing respectfully. Even though she did not agree with what he had done that day, he was still her family’s savior and head. Klingon tradition decreed that her first loyalty be to him.

  “I have something important to discuss with you, niece,” he said in his deep, resonant voice. “It has come to my attention recently that you are of an age to wed.”

  Valdyr’s eyes widened. “Yes, I suppose so, Uncle,” she said. “But I am so busy with school these days, I have not thought much on the matter of prospective husbands.”

  “Your mother arranged no marriage for you before her death,” Kamarag said, seating himself on the narrow, shelflike bed. “Was that your choice?”

  “We never discussed it,” Valdyr said. “My mother married according to liking, not for family advancement. I believe she intended the same for me, but I do not know for certain.”

  “My sister married beneath her,” her uncle said grimly. Valdyr stiffened at hearing her beloved father denigrated so, but Kamarag did not notice. “However, there is no point in rehashing her unfortunate choice, since it all lies in the past. We must look to the future—your future. Someone offered for your hand today, and I accepted.”

  Valdyr held her breath.Who? Keraz? I do not love him, but he is a warrior with honor…no, that cannot be. Keraz is married, I remember hearing that. Who else —A sudden thought occurred to her, and, with a sinking sensation, she heard her uncle confirm her worst fears.