Vectors

by Dean Wesley Smith

  The travel agencies might as well rip those posters up. Nobody was going to want to come to this dump anymore.

  He cast the rioters a threatening glance or two, but although some were touching the ships’ landing struts they weren’t doing anything destructive. Not yet anyway. If anything happened, the escort pilots would zap them. So he kept moving forward at a pace, letting the natives swerve out of his way. He led the squad manfully through a large puddle of fuel, some of which was still gulping out of a discarded and dented container. Their boots splattered it and freshened the stench.

  Thirty meters.

  Cries of anger, protest, and insult at Starfleet’s intrusion into their courtyard grew louder, as the squad jogged across the brick plateau. Stiles didn’t understand the Pojjan language, but some of these people were shouting in English or Vulcan and waving get-out-of-town banners in English, apparently smart enough to know how to get to the Federation personnel.

  It’s getting to me. I’m allowing it to shake me. Just do the job, get the people out of the embassy, into the coach, and lift off. Ignore the crowd. Just ignore them.

  At his right elbow, Travis Perraton was watching a gang of Pojjan teenagers on the other side of the embassy fence. A flash of flame—the teenagers were lighting up a fuel-soaked towel.

  “They can’t throw that this far, can they?” Blake asked from behind Stiles.

  “They don’t have to,” Perraton said. “We’re jogging toward puddles of kerosene.”

  “Gasoline,” Midshipman Jeremy White corrected from the flank.

  “Stinks,” Dan Moose added, then cast to the man on his left, “Make room, Foster.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Bag the noise,” Stiles snapped, turning his head briefly to the right. “Don’t splash through the gas. If we get it on our uniforms, we’re in big trouble.”

  And that was his error—that one glance over his shoulder. A stunning force struck his left shin just below the kneepad, driving his entire leg out behind him. Blown forward by the force of his own movement, Stiles let out a single strangled yell, leaped forward over a slick of gasoline, and crashed to the bricks just beyond the slick. Though he evaded the gas, he slid sidelong into a pile of garbage dumped on the courtyard. Managing to thrust his arms out, he somehow kept from landing on his phaser rifle, which instead clattered to the brick and butted him in the face shield, then scratched across his bared jaw. If his visor had been up, the rifle would’ve taken out his teeth.

  A blunt force rammed into his lower back—a boot—as Carter tumbled over Stiles, crumpling to the bricks on top of the garbage. Carter rolled and ended up on one knee.

  With his jaw and knee throbbing, Stiles tightened his body, twisted onto his side, and brandished his weapon at the laughing crowd as his face flushed with humiliation. They were laughing at him. His fantasy of a clockwork mission had just cracked and blown up before his eyes.

  Bile rose in his throat, a rashy heat down his legs. His lungs tightened as he felt slimy garbage soak into his uniform and the stench of petroleum knot his innards. The sky wheeled above him, cluttered with white helmets and flashing red visors reflecting the afternoon sun.

  Smiling, Perraton reached to pull him to his feet. “Nice going, lightfoot.”

  “Don’t help me!” Stiles blurted.

  As if bitten, Perraton retracted his hand. Stiles rolled to his feet, now smudged with the gummy remains of garbage and mudballs.

  When he got to his feet, Stiles staggered a few steps in the wrong direction and was forced to endure the foolish chickenscratch of turning around and struggling back to the front of his squad, and the further embarrassment of realizing his men were deliberately slowing down so he could get in front. He slammed his way between them, elbowing Perraton and White cruelly out of his path. He didn’t need their charity!

  At the gates, two Pojjan guards immediately opened the iron grid and let them in without a word. The embassy’s medieval-looking carved wooden door, three guys wide and set between two gargoyles, also opened automatically.

  No, not automatically—this door was manual. Another guard or servant of some freaky nationality Stiles didn’t recognize was now peeking around the door’s iron rim like a shy cow peeking out of a barn. He was an elderly man, with bent shoulders and bright green eyes set in a jowly dark face with stripes painted on it. More tribal weirdness.

  Moving far enough into the heavily tiled foyer, Stiles suddenly felt ridiculously out of place. The foyer was splendid, its mosaics of gold and black chipped stone and glossy ceramics portraying some kind of historic battle scene and the coronation of somebody. Must be from way back, because this wasn’t a monarchical culture anymore.

  Was it?

  The guard pushed the big door shut and swung a huge titanium bolt into place to lock them safely inside, then turned to the clutch of evac troopers and gasped, “One minute! I’ll get the ambassador’s assistant!”

  And he disappeared into a wide archway that was two stories tall.

  Oak Squad stood in the middle of the gorgeous tile floor, their uniforms scuffed and stinking, and looked around.

  “I’d hate to be the guy who cleans the grout,” Perraton commented.

  White grunted as he scanned the mosaic on the ceiling. “How long you think we’ll have to wait?”

  “Not long,” Stiles filled in. “They called for us to come get them, so they’re probably ready to leave. And they’re Vulcans, so you know they’re efficient.”

  “How do you know they’ll be stiffs?” Moose asked.

  “Because Ambassador Spock’s a st—a Vulcan. They like to have their own kind around. They understand each other better than we do.”

  “Oh, right,” White drawled. “They do everything better than we do.”

  Stiles scoured him with a glare. “Don’t start on me, Jeremy.”

  He turned away, but in his periphery he noted Perraton’s quick motion to White, erasing any further annoying comments.

  Though they stood in this wide foyer feeling dirty and small, they were not alone. Sounds of footsteps and voices leaked from the depths of the embassy halls, and twice Stiles saw ethereal forms slip from one office to another. Did they trust him to get them out safely? Had they seen the botched choreography of the landing? Did they wonder whether the ensign in command was competent enough to handle this?

  He gripped his phaser rifle until his hands hurt and shifted from foot to foot, halting only when a young woman—a human—skittered through the grand main door and into the huge foyer. Stiles didn’t pay attention. The small-boned woman, with tightly wrapped brown hair, tiny pearl earrings, and a twitch in her left eye, went directly to the tallest of them—Jeremy White—and breathily said, “I’m Miss Theonella, Ambassador Spock’s deputy attaché. Are you Ensign Stiles?”

  She had a tight foreign accent that sounded Earth-based, but Stiles couldn’t pinpoint the country.

  “He’s over there, ma’am,” White told her, and gestured.

  Stiles stepped through the cluster of Starfleeters and took his helmet off, revealing his sweat-plastered blond hair. “Eric Stiles, ma’am. I’m here to evacuate the entire embassy. Nobody should be left behind.”

  “We understand.” Miss Theonella rubbed her tiny pink palms as if kneading bread dough between them. “All embassy envoys, functionaries, ministers, delegates, and clerks will be going, as well as four Pojjan defectors who lost their homes in the last Constrictor. They’re being given asylum here and we have clearance for them to be evacuated with us. In all there are thirty-five of us.”

  “Thirty-five!” Perraton blurted. Then he instantly clammed up, but the number twenty kept flashing in his eyes like beacons.

  How could seven of them safely escort thirty-five dignitaries through fifty meters of rioting?

  “We’re prepared, ma’am,” Stiles shoved in, more loudly than necessary, before anyone else could speak up. “About the landing . . . the ambassador is probably wondering why we were so . . . ou
t of formation . . . .”

  “What?” Miss Theonella’s white temples puckered and her brows came together like pencil points. “We can’t see the courtyard from here. There are only reception rooms on the court side of the building. Was there some reason you wanted us to be watching you? Was there a signal?”

  He stared at her, caught between relief and disappointment that nobody had been watching. “Uh . . . no, no signal.”

  Preoccupied, the thin young woman simply said, “Continue to wait here, please, Ensign. I’ll get the ambassador.”

  Again the evac squad stood alone, holding their rifles, standing in the middle of the gleaming tile floor, listening to the drumming chants of angry people outside in the square and trying to imagine how they were going to hustle thirty-five dignitaries through that. The unpleasant possibility of rushing half of them out to the coach, then coming back for the second group—Stiles winced. Two trips through that courtyard full of alien-haters? Was that safer than one big rush? If he ordered two separate groups, would the angry people see that as their last chance to get them and attack the second group?

  “Wonder why they hate aliens?” Dan Moose voiced.

  Matt Girvan checked his rifle. “I hate you too.”

  Stiles noted that his men were looking at the windows and doors, but his own eyes were focused on the long hall of offices into which Miss Theonella had disappeared. The ambassador was in there somewhere.

  “Ambassador, ambassador,” he murmured. “Don’t you think that’s a flaming word? I love that word. Ambassador . . .”

  “Yeah, nice word, Stiles,” Brad Carter muttered. “Everybody’s got a pet word. Mine’s ‘glue.’”

  Moose put his gauntletted finger to some of the tiles on the wall. “I’ve always been fond of ‘meat’ myself.”

  “Give me ‘meat,’” Perraton echoed. “I want ‘meat.’ You’re right, Dan, great word.”

  “Stiles’s pet word is ‘Vulcan.’ You like that word, Jeremy?”

  “Eh, y’met one stiff, you met ‘em all.”

  “As you were?” Stiles erupted when he saw activity down the hall. “I don’t want you guys prattling when the ambassador—Is that him? I think I see him! Travis! Look—it’s him! He’s coming down the hall! What should I do?”

  “Don’t curtsy, for God’s sake,” Perraton muttered.

  All the men turned to face the hall to their left as a crowd of elegant dignitaries bobbed toward them. In the midst of them was the tall instantly recognizable figure of the famous Ambassador Spock.

  Bow? Kneel? Handshake?

  “Don’t faint! Eric, stand at attention!”

  Perraton’s anxious whisper boomed in Stiles’s ear like a foghorn.

  “Stand at attention!”

  “Attention . . . .” Stiles planted his boots on the tile, but wasn’t able to get them together. He squared his shoulders, raised his chin, held his breath, clutched his rifle, and forced an appearance of adept steadiness and control. Cool. Calm. Military. Crisp. In control. In charge. Confident. Smelly.

  The ambassador and his party approached them, but Spock wasn’t looking at them. Instead his dark head was bowed as he spoke to Miss Theonella, who was clipping along at his side. The ambassador listened, nodded, then spoke again while a male attendant slipped a glossy blue Federation Diplomatic Corps jacket around the boss’s shoulders.

  The sight was a shock—Stiles had expected the flowing ceremonial robes that Vulcan seniors were usually seen wearing, but now that he saw Spock in the trim gray slacks and dark blue jacket with the UFP symbol on the left side, that outfit seemed to make more sense for a spaceborne evacuation. Robes might be harder to handle on boarding ramps and in tight quarters.

  Why hadn’t he thought of that?

  Though Spock—tall, narrow, controlled—possessed all the regal formality common to his race, his famous form was somehow less imperious in person than Stiles had anticipated, his angular Vulcan features more animated, and framed by the fact that he was the only Vulcan in the bunch. Of course, Stiles had only seen still photos or staged lecture tapes. Seeing Spock in real life was very different—he wasn’t stiff at all.

  As they approached, he could hear Miss Theonella’s thready voice.

  “. . . and the provincial vice-warden will be sending his prolocutrix as proxy to speak for the entire hemisphere at Federation central. Also, sir, the consul general’s wife and children are waiting in the Blue Room, and Chancellor De Gaeta’s wife is in his office.”

  Miss Theonella finished her sentence just as she and the ambassador and their party came into the foyer.

  “Thank you, Karen, very good work,” Ambassador Spock said gently, countering her quivering report with his silky baritone voice. “Suggest to the Sagittarian military attaché that he post a Pojjan communications sentry, and that person must speak both Bal Quonnot and Romulan.”

  That voice! That famous voice! Stiles had been hearing it all his life! Historical documentaries, training tapes, mission interactives, holoprograms—now he was here, in person, right in the same room with that voice!

  “This is Ensign Stiles,” Miss Theonella added with a gesture. “And the evacuation escort men, sir.”

  The ambassador scanned the team, then fixed his gaze at Stiles. Directly at him. Right in the eyes! He was looking right at him!

  Those eyes—like blades! Black blades!

  Stiles tried to take a breath, but all he got was a gulp of garbage fumes from his soaked trouser leg. As his lungs seized up, he felt the boink-boink of Perraton’s finger poking him in the back.

  Report, you idiot!

  “Ev . . . Evacuation Squad reporting as you requested, sir! Ensign Eric J. Stiles, Starfleet Special Services reporting, sir! One G-rate transport coach, evacuation team, and five fighter escorts, sir!”

  The ambassador’s black-slash brows went up like bird’s wings. The chamber fell to silence. Stiles’s fervid report echoed absurdly.

  Calmly Spock said, “At ease, Ensign.”

  His deep mellow voice took Stiles utterly by surprise.

  “Aye-aye, sir!” Stiles choked.

  “We’ll be ready within five minutes,” the ambassador told him fluidly, then turned to the attendant who’d put the jacket on him. “Edwin, please bring out the consul general’s family and Mrs. De Gaeta and turn them over to Ensign Stiles.”

  “Right away, Ambassador.”

  As the man left, Spock turned again to Miss Theonella. “You have our records and diplomatic pouches? The legal briefs and service files? Personnel manifests?”

  She held up a stern black pilot’s case with a magnetic lock, hanging from a strap on her shoulder. “All here, sir.”

  “Very well. We should also bring the jurisdictional warrants. They could be confiscated and used to gain passage into restricted areas.”

  “I’ll get them, sir.”

  “No, I’ll get them.” The ambassador turned to leave, then paused and gazed briefly at the tiled floor, thinking. “Stiles . . .”

  “Here, sir!”

  Spock looked up at the inflamed response. Coolly he repeated, “At ease, Ensign.”

  Stiles shivered, glanced at Travis Perraton, and again met the ambassador’s eyes. “Yes, sir . . .”

  “Are you by chance related to—”

  “Yes, sir, I am, sir! Starfleet Security Commander John Stiles, Retired, is my grandfather, sir! He served with you under Captain James T. Kirk, Stardates 1709 to 1788 point 6 as Alpha-Watch navigator aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, Heavy Cruiser NCC 1701, commissioned stardate—”

  “I recall the ship, Ensign.”

  “Oh . . . oh . . . aye, sir . . . .”

  “You have a long line of Starfleet service officers in your family heritage, I also recall.”

  “Yes, sir! Several active-duty servicemen lost in the Romulan Wars, sir! A captain, two lieutenants, two—”

  “Commendable, Mr. Stiles. Carry on.” Spock turned to the little gaggle of people behind him and said, �
��All of you please stand by until everyone else arrives. Then you’ll take your instructions from Ensign Stiles as to how you will arrange yourselves during the actual evacuation. As you know, the building is beam-shielded, and therefore we must go out the door and board the transport coach on foot. Unfortunately, our general safety compromises our safety during emergency evacuation. Karen, keep them in order. I’ll return momentarily.”

  With that he disappeared down a different hallway and into an office, leaving a confused clutch of embassy persons standing here in the foyer, wide-eyed and obviously frightened. By nature, the two groups divided to opposite sides of the foyer, embassy folks over there, Oak Squad over here.

  Stiles let himself be tugged aside, and barely registered the low mutters of his men around him through the afterglow of his meeting with Spock.

  “Beam-shielding,” Matt Girvan grumbled. “There’s planning. What if they had to get out under more dangerous conditions than mudballs and molotovs?”

  “It’s beam-shielded so assassins or terrorists can’t beam in, freak.”

  “Why couldn’t they make it one-way?”

  “Too unstable. Sucks too much energy to maintain over time.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll get ‘em out. Eric’ll carry them all on his back if he has to.”

  “If he doesn’t choke up a lung first.”

  “We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t make us bow backward out of the room.”

  The team laughed. A cluttered sound, muffled . . . like a storm coming.

  Beside Stiles, Perraton raised his helmet visor and smiled with genuine sympathy.

  “You okay, Eric?” he asked.

  “He’s having a coronary,” Jeremy White diagnosed. “Anybody know mouth-to-mouth?”

  “Not me.”

  “No chance.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Let him die.”

  Stiles felt his lips chapping as he breathed in and out, in and out, like a landed fish. He’d just met his hero and he didn’t know if he’d liked it.

  And it wasn’t over. In fact, it was just beginning. He’d have to do everything perfectly from now on. No more botched formations. No more stammering. He had to be perfect. Smooth.