by Diane Carey
“The question is when to use them,” George shot back. “You don’t get it at all, do you? You don’t see the difference.”
The Romulan’s distinct brows drew together, both in disapproval and in thought. “It is a hard question, Kirk.” He folded his arms, not in a relaxed manner, but in that way that said he was holding something in, and he spoke with bitterness. “Life in the galaxy is made of hard questions.”
A creeping silence fell over them, sudden silence that became oppressive as it grew.
April stood between them, on the bridge of his dilemma, forced to choose between causing the deaths of millions or allowing the enslavement of millions more, and doing the one thing he never wanted to do in his life—start a war to keep a war from coming.
His whisper filled the bridge.
“All I want,” he murmured, “all I ever wanted—is for the Federation to grow into a body of guidance and wisdom. I feel like a man who’s fighting with his neighbor over something he’d much rather share. George ... you’ve forced me to understand that we have to be a real power and not simply showful of a mightiness we’re afraid to use. But my God ... is this what we have to have?”
He stopped, disturbed by his own words.
T’Cael spoke without moving. “If you fail to act, war is inevitable. You must question your deepest motivations. I beg you to take the challenge.”
“Either I cause the deaths of millions, or I allow the deaths of millions. That’s what you’re saying,” April told him, his voice caught in his throat.
Desperate to be understood, t’Cael battled to make himself clear. “There are more palatable outcomes, Captain. I can guide you through the automated defensive net that surrounds our Homeworlds. Any patrol ships can be quickly dispatched—” he said, then hesitated a bare instant, hearing himself forget what taking lives meant to this [295] man, hearing himself fall too easily back into doing what needed to be done and considering the loss of lives as secondary. “And you can break down the net as you go. Your presence will throw our Empire into havoc. Once the ground defenses are neutralized, we will communicate with the capital, demand negotiations for peace. If they agree, it will be our opportunity to expose the Supreme Praetor for the tyrant he is! Many of my countrymen share my views. They must listen!”
“And if they don’t?” April countered without a beat. “If they aren’t intimidated, then what? I assume you said ‘if’ for a reason. What then?”
“They’ll have no choice,” t’Cael said emphatically. “And once they’re listening, my people can be very pragmatic and rational.”
“With an arm twisted behind their back? The best case would still cause the deaths of hundreds or thousands. When the government falls, we may find ourselves dealing directly with the military. God, imagine that. How rational will they be?”
“Captain ... I am the military.”
April blinked and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Yes ... go ahead. Convince me that you’re a common sort among your company. I don’t believe you can.”
“And what if they don’t listen, Mr. Cael? Having gone that far, I won’t be able to back down. I’ll have to make good on the threat we’ll represent.”
T’Cael’s silence provided the answer.
April stood up slowly, using his chair for support. “How do I decide which cities to level as examples? It’s a terrible lottery, gentlemen ... a terrible lottery.”
Compelling though the question was, this wasn’t a hypothetical situation put before one of his classes at the Academy. This was real. Living beings would die, and the historians would be busy for decades. Having forced the issue to a standstill, April waved a hand limply. “Let me think this out ... let me just think.” The hand went down to caress the rail that circled the bridge, and he walked along it as though it was a steadying force.
“We can’t ignore what Cael is saying. These things he’s telling us ... I wish to heaven I’d never heard them. We have a crushing problem foisted upon us. If we see to ourselves and vacate the area, we virtually guarantee interstellar war. If we save our skins, we’ll have failed to take a stand. If we move in and dislodge the governing [296] system, we’ll cause a chaos that’ll take decades to repair ... I don’t know if I can live with either of those, I really don’t.” He turned achingly now and held out both hands in a subdued manner of request. “I’m not asking for stylish solutions. But fate has to have something better in mind for this ship, for us ... than just being the wick on a bomb ... but here’s this gentleman, telling us these things, and more than anything I’ve ever hated in my life, I hate saying ... that he’s right.”
George shivered, looking up, staring at the captain, his lips parted in mute question, and froze as he realized the captain was looking right back at him.
“Yes,” April went on, having anticipated George’s reaction. “He is right. To prevent a war by destroying its hub—isn’t that the right thing?”
In his soliloquy he had come around to the starboard side, where George stood watching, listening, frightened by all this. They were facing each other now, and April’s last question, which a moment ago had been hypothetical, suddenly became real and demanded an answer.
George swallowed hard. “I can’t help you make that kind of decision,” he said. “I won’t. You’d hate me forever.”
Leaning against the rail, April nodded. His feet were like blocks of ice as he climbed the bridge steps toward the turbo-lift.
“Stand by till I get back,” he wearily said, pausing at the lift doors as they parted. “I’ll decide.”
He was a hundred years older by the time the doors closed between him and the bridge.
George stared at the red doors, focusing on the thin line where the lift sealed shut. “Hell ...”
Somewhere behind him, his back also turned, t’Cael murmured, “I regret saying these things.”
George didn’t turn. “You had no choice.”
They stood with their backs to each other, half the bridge between them, facing opposite ends of the starship. Strange, the poetry of chance—on the large scale, t’Cael happened to be facing Federation space, and George the binary Homeworlds of the Rihannsu Empire.
“Is it possible,” George began, speaking very deliberately, “that just maybe ... you exaggerated the danger?”
“No.” The answer was definitive. “It’s often not true danger but imagined danger that causes wars.” T’Cael remained facing away from [297] Kirk and spoke into the void on the screen. His arms were once again wrapped tightly against his ribs. He didn’t move. It was as though his voice, his mind, and his body had divided into separate entities. “My civilization has known war as an intimate, with each other or someone else, since the exodus—since before we even came to our Homeworlds. Our technology has advanced beyond our wisdom. We either obliterate our enemies, or the day will come when someone will have no choice but to obliterate us. Can you blame me that I desperately seek some other way?”
His voice was quiet. The guilt he felt at laying all this at April’s feet was obvious.
George sighed sadly. “I hate all of this,” he muttered. “I’ve heard myself saying things I wouldn’t want my boys to say. All I really ever wanted was to hand over a safe galaxy to my sons.”
“You never shall,” t’Cael said.
“That’s your opinion. Pardon me if I keep trying.”
T’Cael nodded solemnly and added, “You can only teach them courage.” He tipped his head toward the turbo-lift, the way Robert April had gone. “Like his.”
He was heading, though he probably wouldn’t have admitted it, toward sickbay. Wandering the corridors of his starship with his hands stuffed deep into the cardigan’s pockets and morality chewing at his ankles, he began to realize, no matter the size, just how small any one ship was. No matter the size ... no bigger than the hearts and consciences of those who manned her. He was her conscience, he knew. That was his role as her captain. This was the bitter end of the glory he’d envisioned
while nurturing the starship program into being. Odd that the sourest fruit was the first to be plucked.
He needed to hear Sarah’s voice. Though he knew she would refuse to help him make the decision, just as George had—and rightfully so—just seeing her would clear his head.
His mind was cluttered now with hypothetical scenarios, all the way from skipping out on the whole problem to spearheading an invasion and committing the Federation to growing up much too fast and before its time. One of those scenarios, he knew, would come true.
The awful burden was knowing that he was right ... George was right ... t’Cael was right ... with all these rights, how could there be such a giant wrong as that which loomed before them?
So many variables. He had listened, perhaps too well. The pride in [298] seeing George Kirk’s perceptions widen was marred by the widening of April’s own perceptions. T’Cael’s words forced him to see a tangle of obligations and alternatives that discolored his view of things. Before this day, he could always afford to think in simpler terms. Safer and prettier terms. But now there was an ugliness swerving into his path that he had always steered around. If George was right about finding another way, how could they explain to the billions dead if t’Cael’s prediction came true?
April shivered, and drew his shoulders inward, unable to ignore t’Cael’s prediction. This situation ... he could never have foreseen it. It had turned them into philosophical contortionists, yet there were no answers in all the bending and twisting.
Once again he heard George’s words: There has to be another way.
“Please let there be,” he murmured to no one, no one at all.
An arm looped around his neck and tightened. He sucked in his breath and was dragged backward into an adjacent corridor, then back farther into a service locker. His arms flew outward, seeking his balance, but any thoughts of resisting were squelched by the cool unmistakable nip of a laser emitter pressed tightly against his ear. He started to speak, but was interrupted by his captor’s voice.
“Don’t move, Captain. Because I’ll kill you if you do.”
Chapter Twenty-three
ON THE BRIDGE, everyone was hurting for Captain April, even more than for the countless lives that would be sacrificed either way. They could hear the ball and chain he dragged as it clunked through the ship, and those bleeps and whirs the bridge made became engulfing, like a cage made of nothing but sound.
George had found himself a place to sit, at the unmanned science station, as far from the command center as he could get without leaving the bridge. He sat with his elbow on the console, his thumb knuckle resting across his mouth as though that would keep him from having to say anything, and he stared blankly into the blur of red, blue, and yellow lights and monitor displays.
Across the bridge, t’Cael still stood unmoving, arms still wrapped around himself, also lost to the emptiness of waiting.
All around the bridge deck, people waited. After so much action, the sudden stasis was maddening. Sanawey, Hart, Florida each tried to do busy work, little maintenance things to keep them from having to look up at the first officer or the Romulan. There was some damage control to be handled—a leak here, a loss of pressure there—but nothing the ship’s baffle systems couldn’t compensate for almost by themselves. There was a navigational course to be plotted and laid in—no, there were two. One straight out of this sector ... one straight in. With instrumentation this sophisticated, a few seconds’ work. Not [300] enough. Occasionally someone from engineering called up, pretending to have something to ask or to say, but what they really wanted was to know what was going on, and no one could offer so much as a clue. By now George had become numb to the double-tone beep of the intercom, and was happy to let Sanawey field the questions. There it was again—how many times now? He’d lost count.
“Bridge. Sanawey.”
“This is Graff.”
“What do you need?” Sanawey asked, sounding just as tired of this as George felt and making his questions direct as though to demand a direct, and short, answer.
“Where’s Mr. Kirk?”
Sanawey looked up, but it took George several more seconds to muster a willingness to answer. Eventually he dropped his hand from his mouth and jabbed the com switch nearest him. “Kirk here. What is it?”
“I’ve got the captain.”
George’s brow puckered. “What?”
“I’ve got the captain. He’s my prisoner.”
T’Cael turned. The others straightened to look as George leaned over the board, realization slowly dawning. They could almost hear the click of pieces falling together in his mind. He stared hypnotically for an instant. As comprehension dawned, his heart snapped and his stomach turned to stone. He bolted from the chair. “It’s Graff—” Without thinking he pressed the mute and pointed at Sanawey. “Damn him, it’s not Wood, it’s Graff! He’s got Robert! Trace it!”
Sanawey quickly set about it.
As George bent once again over the board, t’Cael appeared beside him and listened, his presence unexpectedly reassuring.
“Graff, can you hear me?” George began again, lifting his thumb from the mute. “What do you want?”
“I want off this ship. I want shuttlecraft clearance. I’m taking the captain with me.”
“Why?”
“Because if he’s with me, I know you won’t blow me out of space.”
George hit the mute a second time and snapped his fingers at Sanawey again. “Find Lieutenant Reed! Have him turn Wood loose, then fill him in!”
Sanawey nodded, then went about trying to do two things at once.
Gripping the padded edge of the console, George held his breath, [301] trying to clear his head and shake his thoughts back into gear. He licked his lips before speaking. “All right ... you want clearance. You’ve got it. We sure don’t want you. But you’re going to have to leave the captain behind, or no deal.”
“No deal is right. I’m not that stupid.” Graff sounded more smug than desperate, but certainly desperate enough. “I’m going to head down toward the bay. When I get there, I want a shuttle ready to go.”
“How do we know you won’t kill the captain after you launch?”
“You don’t. But I’ll kill him for sure otherwise. Don’t play with me, Mr. Kirk. I’m not a murderer, but I’ll do whatever you force me to do.”
“We’ll meet you down there. I want to see the captain.”
“I don’t care what you do. Just remember who’s in charge—and have that shuttlecraft ready.”
“All right, but listen to me. Graff?”
“Yeah?”
George leaned close to the transspeaker. “If you hurt him, I’ll follow you as far as you run,” he said. “Until I catch you.”
Silence on the other end confirmed those words. No witnesses needed.
Then there was an unceremonious click.
George dove toward Sanawey’s station. “Did you get them?”
“Pinpointed,” Sanawey said as George and t’Cael hovered over his instruments on either side. “Deck G. Sickbay area.”
“Can you track them?”
“On a ship this empty, I could track a housefly.”
“I’m going. Keep in touch with me by hand communicator. Make sure he can’t tap in on us. When Reed checks in, tell him what’s going on. We’ll try to close in on that creep.”
As he spun on his heel toward the turbo-lift, he yanked out both the backup hand laser and the communicator that still hung on his belt from his visit planetside, and bumped into t’Cael.
“Shall I—” the Romulan began, and it was clear that he felt somehow responsible.
“No, stay here,” George said. Suddenly his teeth were gritted. “This is my job.”
“They’re in the lift now, sir, moving down the dorsal, just like Graff said. Heading for the aft sections. Mr. Reed is holding for you.”
“Patch me in.”
“Reed here, George. Where are you?”
[302]
“I’m heading for the hangar bay. Meet me there.”
“Righto.”
His hand was sweaty as he clutched the communicator too tightly, and it almost flew out of his grip when the bridge hailed him.
“Mr. Kirk—” Sanawey’s voice.
“Kirk here.”
“I don’t understand this ...”
“What?” George snapped, beyond patience.
“He’s turning. He’s going in the wrong direction. That’s not the way to the hangar bay ...”
George reached out and stopped the turbo-lift. “Where’s he going?”
“I’m not sure. There’s nothing down there.”
“Come on, Sanawey, project!”
“He’s sending you on a wild-goose chase to the hangar bay, but he’s—now he’s heading down very deliberately ... through Level sixteen.”
George pressed his lips together and endured the wait as several voices lapped over Sanawey’s—Hart’s, then t’Cael’s—something about putting up schematics of those sections.
And at last, t’Cael was shouting. “Your Auxiliary environmental control—Kirk! He plans to tamper with life support! He wants us all dead—then he’ll leave the ship!”
Instantly George hit the channel select on his communicator, having learned to trust t’Cael’s understanding of Romulan offensive tactics. “Drake! He bluffed us! Auxiliary Environ—”
“I heard. Fast as lightning I’m going.”
“I’ll meet you there!” He quaked with frustration at having been so easily bluffed. He twisted the lift control and started it off in another direction, then made his thumb move on the communicator again. “Hart, can you override—Hart, come in.”
“Hart here, sir.”
“Can you override the pressure equalization in a particular section from up there?”
“Can I ... I don’t know. Nobody’s ever tried that.”
“Try it. Pressurize that room to ten atmospheres.”
