He stepped toward the Doctor. To his credit the smaller man did not shrink back.
“In four attempts to conceive an heir we have followed all of your directions. Tell me”—his smile was slight and cold—“what have we to show for your advice?”
Rajho wisely said nothing.
“Sixteen memorial stones,” Terant answered his own question. “Sixteen stones in three years. Is this not remarkable?”
“Baron?”
Terant’s eyes snapped to his chancellor. Vissint understood he had thrown himself between Rajho and a spear. A bold move by a good man. Somewhere beneath his grief and rage, Terant recognized these men were not his enemies. He made the effort to modulate his voice.
“Yes, Chancellor?”
“I wish with all my heart your tragedy was unique,” Vissint said, “but it is not.”
“How do you mean?” The anger was shocked back into Terant’s voice. “Four pregnancies have ended in death—four fours of my children are dead—and you say this is not unique?”
“There have been no live births in all of Atwaan,” Rajho blurted in a rush, then flinched under the baron’s glare.
“Is this true?” Terant demanded. Then, when neither man spoke: “Is. This. True?”
“Yes, Baron,” Vissint answered. “No infant has been born alive in over a year.”
Terant paused, remembering the crowds, neat and orderly about the pavilion, picturing in his mind the populace. When was the last time he had seen a family with a clutch of infants? Not a four, no, not in the years since the withering had begun; but three or two or even one? He could not remember. There had been no babies….
“And I was not told?”
“We sought a cure,” Rajho answered. “And forbore to tell you until we were successful.”
“And you did not warn me? Did not warn my wife?”
“We thought that of all the People,” Rajho said, “you would be spared.”
Terant raised his hand, forestalling words. He knew the Doctor was not flattering him idly.
Along the opposite wall, half concealed by pillars, were the sepulchres of the Giants. Mad, they had been, and dying, but they had caused all that was now Atwaan to be. Had caused him to be.
His grandfather had been young, newly made a border warden for the barony, when the Giants had emerged from the hollow of the Builders. His grandmother had been among them, a girl on the threshold of womanhood, the only one to survive the killing fever.
Young Terant the eldest had married her when she was of age. She had been head and shoulders taller and half again as broad as the brawniest champion, beautiful despite patches of skin left bare by the fever, and he had loved her. As their son Terant had been devoted to her and as he—who remembered his grandmother as a great, looming gentleness—had adored her.
No one breathed it aloud, but in their hearts the People believed the Giants were descendants of the Builders. And on the strength of her blood in his veins, the Doctors had conspired to keep from him a tragedy that scourged his people.
Journey!Had they thought to find the cure in his children?
“Dispatch riders,” he said. “Dawnward and duskward, upwater and down. Under my marque inform them of our plight—”
He caught himself.
“Do not reveal its totality, but hold back no medical detail. Inquire of their Doctors for any theory of cause or program of cure.” He raised a finger. “Make clear to them that there will be a reward commensurate with the usefulness of their information.”
“At once, Baron.”
Terant did not acknowledge the parting salute. His eyes, narrowed in calculation, were fixed on the sepulchres of the Giants.
CHAPTER
6
Three fours of days and three before the Quest
Conlon wrestled the two-meter section of power transfer conduit around in the much-reduced free space of the engine room. There really was no other place for the assembly. Her staff had rerouted everything that could be rerouted to auxiliary panels and were keeping as much out of the way as possible. When completed, the plan allowed sixty centimeters of sidle space along either side, but for now the entire central floor area was occupied.
The PTC looked deceptively light, but it was constructed of six phase-transition welded layers of tritanium and transparent aluminum; the mass was considerable. She wished there was room for a nullgrav grapple as she muscled the conduit into its coupling. Bracing it in place with her shoulder, she triple-checked the fit before engaging the molecular seal.
The assembly was low-tech but complex. Not a combination that inspired confidence, but it was the best they could do outside of a shipyard.
A transfer shunt directed the plasma that would have gone to the nacelles into the rotating secondary attenuation chamber. The rotating chamber matched up with each of three constrictor segments, which magnetically narrowed—and intensified—the plasma stream. The constrictor segments each connected sequentially with one of four lengths of PTC, rotating like the barrels of a Gatling gun. At the far end was a collection chamber that split the flickering energy into two fixed PTCs—or would when she got them in place. These two longer bypass conduits carried the twin streams back to the nacelle channels.
With gross mechanical rotation, exact alignment was always a problem—nearly an impossibility when tolerances were measured in microns. Tev had earned them an extra margin of error by devising ablative stents for the floating couplings. Any flash would vaporize the sleeves harmlessly without refracting back into the peristaltic field. Their elegant practicality almost made her take back her remark about his not being a ship’s engineer.
Almost.
At the moment Tev was checking her work on the constrictor assembly. She heard his surprised grunt at the first readings and listened as he recalibrated his tricorder and tried again. This time his grunt was approving.
Conlon smiled grimly as she tightened the duranium collar around her latest connection. In operation the system would be surrounded by a containment field running off the impulse drive. At this level of energy—and risk—she was going for every scrap of protection she could.
Turning, she was surprised to find the first section of bypass conduit at her elbow. Actually, it was only one end of the conduit; the other, some three and a half meters away, was in Tev’s hands.
Humanly impossible,she thought as she grabbed the conduit.
“Work will proceed faster,” Tev said, “if we dispense with the progressive assessments.”
Conlon loose-fit the PTC into the collection chamber without comment and waited while Tev made his connection before beginning the sealing process.
“Dispense with the progressive assessments,”she thought, her smile grim. Not checking my every move is probably the highest compliment in that prig’s repertoire.
CHAPTER
7
Three fours of days and two before the Quest
This time Faulwell was not the first to the meeting, he noted as he slid into the chair beside Carol Abramowitz. Tev and Nancy Conlon were by the main viewscreen, which showed an animated tactical schematic of the Klingon cruiser taking position alongside the colony ship. Scuttlebutt had it the Klingons had moved back and forth over the entire cylinder at close range before taking up position near its leading edge. This was a subject of some annoyance to those still trying to discern the colony ship’s secrets from a maddeningly corkscrewing distance.
“The point, of course,” Tev was saying, “is that no stable warp field can do what the Klingon field seems to be doing.”
“Which means it can’t be a stable warp field,” Gomez said.
“Right,” Conlon said. “Their warp bubble is blinking on and off twenty-four times a second.”
“They are actually at warp less than half of each second,” Tev said. “But because they only move minutely with each warp, the net effect appears to be that they are moving through normal space at point seven six light.”
Stev
ens looked like someone had spit in his soup. “Hang on, a single warp drive can’t strobe on and off that fast.”
“It’s a series of warp fields.” Tev adjusted the screen, and the Klingon’s warp field began cycling rapidly through a rainbow of hues. “But not separate warp drives.”
“The warp signature clearly shows a single core,” Conlon said. A wave pattern appeared across the bottom of the screen. “But with a variety of harmonics.”
“Six of them,” Tev added.
“What they are using is six separate actuation assemblies,” Conlon said, “shunting between them in rotation.”
Faulwell wondered if he was the only one fighting off the impression that Tev and Conlon had become Bynars.
“How?” Gold asked.
“Imagine six parallel sections of primary plasma transfer conduit, each with its own constrictor segment,” Conlon began.
“Power is routed through each sequentially,” Tev took up the thread. “But just as it fully engages, the plasma is shunted to the next.”
“They’re riding the clutch,” Gomez said.
“Right.” Conlon grinned at the first officer. “But to do it without frying their transfer plate, they have to use six separate clutches.”
Faulwell shook his head. Every time he thought he was up on his engineering terms, at least enough to follow the conversations in this room, somebody would go and raise the bar on him. He didn’t understand a word Conlon or Tev had said.
“Why doesn’t everybody do this?” Gold asked.
Gomez answered this one. “Because eventually the on/off cycle will crystallize the plasma injectors.”
“Exactly,” Tev said.
Gold frowned. “Define eventually.”
“Two hundred hours, maybe more in a pinch,” Conlon answered. “And with anything over a hundred and sixty I’d want everything checked out by a starbase before we went on any long journeys.”
“You say we can do this?” Gold arched an eyebrow. “You’ve already set this up?”
Tev and Conlon practically beamed at each other.
“Chief Engineer Conlon devised the original design,” Tev said.
“Lieutenant Commander Tev figured out how to make it work,” Conlon interrupted.
“A detail,” he said modestly.
Faulwell saw Gold and Gomez exchange glances as others around the table straightened slightly.
“The engineering staff is conducting final tests now,” Tev added. “Though this is a formality. Chief Engineer Conlon and I assembled the system ourselves.”
“First Corsi and Stevens…” Abramowitz said under her breath.
A single bark of startled laughter escaped before Faulwell caught himself. He was just able to muster an expression of polite inquiry by the time everyone else in the room looked his way. He tried to kick Abramowitz under the table, but she had shifted her legs to the other side of her chair.
“We had four matched sections of PTC in stores,” Conlon went on after a slight pause, “but only three constrictor segments, which was a problem because at least four assemblies are needed to make the system work.”
“Three plus the existing drive…” Gomez began.
“I didn’t want to use ship’s primary systems any more than absolutely necessary.”
“Of course.”
Again, Conlon smiled. “Lieutenant Commander Tev solved this by putting the constrictor segments and PTCs on separate rotations.”
“So we’ll be strobing in three/four time?” Gold said.
“Exactly.”
“How long until you’re ready?”
“Thirty minutes,” Tev said. “The conn officer will need to be briefed on navigation under these conditions.”
“We’ll need to drop out of warp for eighteen of those minutes,” Conlon added, “to switch from the primary plasma transfer assembly to the strobe device.”
“Let’s get to it,” Gold said. “Everyone else get your ducks in a row. We meet the Klingons in forty minutes.”
* * *
“Steady, Wong.”
On the screen the colony ship and its Klingon escort bore down on the da Vinci at three-fourths the speed of light. Intellectually Gold knew the image was enhanced, altered to suit human eyes. At this range the dark-gray-on-black vessels would have been invisible. Even visible, their velocity would have distorted their shape to human eyes. But to Gold the sight of the mismatched pair was real enough.
They’d jumped five hundred and forty million kilometers, half a light-hour, ahead of the colony vessel to prepare for this rendezvous.
“Conlon, everything still go?”
“Spindizzy’s running hot and true, Captain,”came the instant reply over the intercom. “Ready when you are.”
The corner of Gold’s mouth quirked at the chief engineer’s nickname for the…well, what was a proper name after all? He envisioned the rapidly rotating lengths of plasma conduit interlocking sixty-some times a second, with constrictor units spinning independently at some ungodly speed of their own. “Spindizzy” seemed as good a name as any.
“Then bring Spindizzy online at your discretion, Conlon.”
“Engaged.”A pause, then:“All readings nominal. We’re good to go.”
“Come about,” Gold said to the conn officer. “Match speed and take up position on the opposite beam. Show them what we can do, but don’t make a challenge out of it.”
“Matching course and speed, mirroring position, aye,” Wong said.
The da Vinci arced gracefully into its new heading. Gold saw the stars streak briefly as Wong held the warp field stable, interrupting the flicker for a fraction of a second to accelerate into position. A moment later they took up station on the colony vessel’s port beam, or port beam relative to its course, Gold amended mentally: neither ahead of nor behind the Klingon ship.
“We are being hailed,” Shabalala said almost immediately. “They say prepare to be boarded.”
Gold didn’t need to consult his granddaughter’s Klingon fiancé to know that was imperious even for Klingons.
He did not for a moment think their coming to him was meant as a courtesy. They wanted to see his ship without showing him theirs. He considered refusing, but keeping them out would require him to raise shields, something that could only devolve into a confrontation. Though some military historians might be interested in how a modern Saber -class starship would fare against a heavily modified, but still ancient Klingon ship of the line, he couldn’t imagine how that would help the colonists they’d come to save.
“Haznedl, have all personnel directly involved in the mission report to the observation lounge,” Gold said, heading toward the turbolift. “Shabalala, transmit the coordinates of our transporter room and tell them they will be welcome in five minutes. Then tell Corsi to send some people to transporter room one and warn Poynter that we’re about to have guests.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Oh, and tell Corsi to have Blue’s chair removed from the observation lounge. I don’t want to insult their captain by not putting him on an equal footing with me.”
Shabalala smiled. “Understood, sir.”
CHAPTER
8
Kairn looked about with interest as the Federation vessel’s transporter room materialized around him. He was careful to betray no excitement, of course, emulating the weary professionalism of Captain Kortag. The captain made this seem completely routine, which, as far as Kairn knew, it might be.
Not so Langk, ostensibly second in command of the engineering team Kairn led. Head and shoulders taller than the others, Langk stood like a chieftain taking possession of a prize.
Langk was of the powerful House of K’Tal and destined for greater things—chief engineer of the Sword of Kahless within the decade, to hear him tell it. He obeyed as a warrior should, but let no one forget his social status. Where Kortag’s uniform was supple with years of service, Langk’s was polished to high luster, squeaking with his every movement.
/> Kairn hoped that whenever the young warrior managed to make a complete fool of himself, he’d do it without dishonoring the Empire.
For his own part, Kairn wore more cloth than leather, his only badge of status the Master’s dagger across his heart.
Facing them now were four humans, one male and three female.
The captain was instantly apparent; though not as grizzled as Kortag, he was just as gray. The practice of giving nursemaid tasks to senior warriors whose honored prime was past seemed common to both cultures.
The gray human surprised Kairn by speaking in precise, if heavily accented, Klingon. “I am Captain Gold. The da Vinci is my ship.”
“Kortag, captain of the Qaw’qay’, ” Kortag answered. Then, not to be outdone, he continued in the Federation’s language. “Commander Kairn, leader of the engineers, and Lieutenant Langk, his second.”
Kairn nodded in acknowledgment; Langk raised his chin a notch.
Captain Gold indicated the darker-haired female, then the golden one. “Commander Gomez, leader of the S.C.E. team. Lieutenant Commander Corsi, chief of security.” Then he indicated the woman behind the transporter console. “And Transporter Chief Poynter.”
That surprised Kairn; a mere technician would never be introduced to officers. Kortag grunted in unsurprised acknowledgment, evidently familiar with human custom. Langk turned his shoulder to the technician.
“If you will accompany us to the observation lounge,” Captain Gold was saying, “we can discuss strategy.”
As he stepped from the transporter platform behind his captain, Kairn stole a quick glance at the light fixtures and another at the fit of the control console. The technician caught his eye and smiled, recognizing the professional appraisal.
Kairn cocked an eyebrow, engineer to engineer, before falling into step with the human engineer.
As they walked side by side behind the captains and ahead of Langk and the security officer, Kairn was very aware this was the first time he had been so close to a human. He clasped his hands behind his back to avoid accidental contact, content in her apparent decision to walk in silence.
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