STAR TREK: TOS #16 - World's Apart, Book One - The Final Reflection

by John M. Ford

  “If it’s on the label and manifest, then the Cargomaster has to know,” Krenn said. “Who else?” He counted through his officers.

  “Someone’s got to command this instant army.”

  “Maktai ...”

  “Would they trust a lower rank?”

  “I haven’t decided who ‘they’ are yet.” He thought of Meth of Imperial Intelligence, with his plastic face.

  He thought of Kelly. “But I don’t suppose it matters. Let’s go.”

  “Who ... ?” said the voice from the other side of the door.

  “It’s Krenn, Mak.” He pushed the heavy disrupter inside his sash, out of sight.

  Maktai opened the door. “Parkhest ...”

  “Just the way I feel, Mak. We’ve got trouble aboard.”

  “The passenger?” Maktai looked at his wall monitor. “There’s no alert.”

  “Not yet. Get some clothes on, and come with me. Rapid action.”

  “Acting, Captain.”

  “And, Mak—light weapons.”

  “Khest diplomacy.”

  Krenn stepped into the cabin, letting the door close, and watched Maktai dress, noting carefully where the Security chief put the small projectile pistol he favored for light work. If Mak were not Klingon, this would be easier, Krenn thought. But he could not show Maktai the gun. And he could not order Mak to come unarmed; the one would have known he went to arrest, if not execution, and that must not happen until Krenn knew who else was part of the mutiny.

  And it was possible still that they would not have to execute more than a few crewmen, as strong example. It was not necessarily a crime to consider mutiny.

  [176] Krenn and Maktai met Akhil and Kelly in the lift. Kelly looked, confused and sleepy, at Krenn; then she looked at Maktai. Mak gave a faint shake of his head.

  Krenn felt his lips pull back, his liver turn to lead.

  They arrived in the hold. Akhil went to the cargo module, plugged in a keypad and pressed buttons. Seals cracked, and the thick insulated door swung open; a cloud of white vapor flooded out.

  “What in the name of the Nameless Emperor is this?” Maktai said, shivering in the wave of cold air.

  “See for yourself,” Krenn said, and motioned Maktai and Kelly forward. Akhil brought the deck lights up as they reached the door, and the glowing white fog was blinding. Krenn thought briefly about what Admiral Whitetree would have said, if he were told fifty Klingons had entered his space without even rippling his sensors.

  Krenn’s vision cleared, and he looked into the module.

  Whitefang and zentaar carcasses stood ranked along the inner walls, impaled on frost-covered rods.

  Akhil’s fingers thrust into the base of Krenn’s skull; a shock ran down Krenn’s spine, and he fell forward, carrying Mak and Kelly with him into the freezer. He felt ice burn his face, saw the arc of light from outside sweep down to nothing as the door swung shut.

  Maktai crawled from beneath Krenn, reached for the opening, got two fingers on the frame. The door closed regardless. There was a hiss as the gaskets resealed, and then total darkness.

  Krenn rolled over. His legs were still paralyzed: they struck a carcass. Maktai said, “G’dayt, v’kaase,” in an almost disinterested tone. Shock, Krenn thought.

  “Freeze it, Mak,” Krenn said. “Freeze the stumps before you bleed out.”

  “Right ...”

  “Kelly, can you reach Mak?”

  “He’s got it,” she said.

  Krenn felt muscle control returning to his lower [177] body. He realized the floor was sucking heat from him; knew he would freeze to it in a moment. He levered himself up, burning his hands.

  “Kelly to Bridge,” she was saying. “Kelly to Security. Kelly to any station, priority call.” A flash of light came from nearby; Kelly had done something to her communicator so the blue-white call light shone bright and steady. “That won’t last long,” she said, “but it might as well be good for something. I can’t call out through this thing.”

  Even in the darkness, it was still not much light, and it was cold and pale. Kelly reached inside her tunic, produced a palm-sized object. “I’ve got a light sonic. Will that do any good on the door?”

  “We’ll try it,” Krenn said. “Mak, you’ve ...” But of course he knew.

  “Slug-thrower. You said small weapons.”

  “I did.” Krenn drew out the heavy disrupter. Its grip froze to his fingers; he pulled it free, wrapped it in the end of his sash.

  “Small?” Maktai said, as Krenn’s pistol caught the light.

  Krenn held the gun close to the doorframe, thumbed fire. The blue flash was dazzling, and fragments of plastic erupted; Krenn felt them shower his arms. He examined the target spot. It was disappointing: the insulation had absorbed much of the blast energy. But Krenn had heard metal tear. The sonic would be worthless, but the disrupter would work, if there was enough charge.

  And enough heat, and enough air.

  “Could you explain,” Maktai said, his voice very tight, “what we’re doing here?”

  Krenn tried to do so, shouting to be heard as he cut the door.

  Maktai said, “All right,” and there was no condemnation in it; no Klingon would require excuses of a Captain threatened with mutiny. “What does Akhil want, then? It can’t be the ship, not this way.”

  [178] “It has to be the ship, or else the passenger,” Krenn said. “And I don’t think it’s the ship, either.”

  “Captain, permission to speak?”

  “For the duration of the crisis, Kelly.”

  “Did the Captain suspect this one from the first?”

  “Yes,” Krenn said, and bore down on the disrupter. The cold was in his lungs like death’s own hand now, and only the flash of the disruptor gave any warmth at all.

  Maktai’s head rolled to the side. Kelly moved toward him, shook him. Maktai grunted, stirred, then slumped again.

  “In his sash, near his pistol,” Krenn said. “He’s got ...”

  Kelly knew. She had the metal cylinder out, and was tugging Maktai’s tunic open at the collar. She held the agonizer to the communicator’s light, checking the setting, and applied it. Maktai’s limbs twitched.

  Krenn said, “I’ll tell you when I need a touch of that.”

  As Kelly had warned, the communicator’s battery died shortly. A knife-thin light came in around the doorframe, where Krenn had made his cuts. Kelly began firing her sonic into the frozen meat; the noise was worse than the disruptor on the door, but it seemed to generate a little bit of heat.

  After years of darkness Krenn reached the last corner. He struggled to stand; his skin hurt as he moved. He wondered if the blood was frozen in his small surface vessels. He had seen that happen. The flesh went greenish-black, and sloughed away like bark from a dead tree.

  Krenn slammed his shoulder against the door. Pain exploded inside him. Frost crashed. The panel did not move.

  Maktai got up, wavering, Kelly helping him. The three of them leaned together.

  “Action,” Krenn said.

  With a tearing crash the door fell out. The Klingons [179] staggered onto the cargo deck. Krenn felt his lungs open up to receive the hot air, tried to control his breathing so his heart would not burst.

  The wall communicator had been shot apart. At the lift doors, Maktai hit the call button. The indicator did not light. “He’s locked them off,” he said, hammered the panel with his maimed hand, then looked at the stumps of his fingers and said, “I didn’t even feel that.” He took a step, then leaned against the wall. Ice crystals fell from his shoulders. “The stairway’s around the corner ... we’ll have to take the boom corridor forward.”

  Krenn said, “That’s two decks up, then the length of the ship, then up three more decks to Emanuel’s room.” Ignoring Maktai’s look, Krenn looked back the way they had come. “But there’s a stage right back there.”

  “I’ll set the controls,” Kelly said.

  “Krenn,” Mak said, “there are
only cargo transporters on this level. ... Oh, khest it, I’m coming.” He took one step, two, then slumped against the wall again. Krenn knew it wasn’t muscle keeping him up, but pure klin.

  “You’re no use to me as you are,” Krenn said, “and less use dead.”

  Mak slid down to the deck. He wrapped the fingers of his good hand around the other wrist; it might have been to slow the bleeding once his blood thawed, but Krenn saw Maktai’s look. Kahlesste kaase, it said. Kahless’s Hand.

  Krenn and Kelly made for the transporter stage. He had not seen her run since she had come aboard Fencer: it pleased him to know that she still could run.

  “Your arm,” he said then, because it hung like a dead thing nailed to her body.

  “My shoulder froze,” she said, and Krenn knew it was literal truth; she was metal there, within. He remembered the feel of the pistol butt in his hand, for only an instant.

  [180] There was not enough pain in Akhil’s body to pay for all of this.

  They reached the transporter, a flat plane of rhomboidal segments. Krenn could not remember the scramble rate for living things sent by the less finely tuned cargo units, and was glad of the lapse. “Starboard stage, Pod Deck 4,” he said.

  “Acting.” She worked the controls one-handed with an ease that was more than manual dexterity: Krenn suddenly realized that he had not known she even knew the transport routines. He supposed those in the Unassigned pool must master as many skills as possible, to more often get out of the pool and on a ship.

  She would not be going back to the pool after this cruise, Krenn thought.

  “Energizing,” she said, and pushed the levers. Krenn held dead still; it couldn’t hurt.

  He turned golden and vanished.

  Krenn flickered in on the disc of the passenger transporter: Deck 4 Starboard, the room sign said. He still hurt in all the same places, and now he had a headache, but a scramble error never left the victim able to notice his problem.

  The corridor was empty, its far end, with the portside transporter, just out of sight around the curve. One door along the forward wall was open, and Earth-bright light spilled out. Krenn moved to the open door. No sound came from within.

  He might, he knew, be a long time too late. But Fencer was still his. He went through the door.

  The outer room was empty. Dr. Tagore’s game grid was in pieces on the table, shattered by a disrupter bolt. A book lay on the floor, by an overturned chair; The Innocents Abroad, its cover said. The door to the inner room had been burned open.

  Krenn heard the sound of a fresh charge slide going into a weapon. He moved, quickly, to the inner door.

  Akhil stood by the bathroom door, which was closed; [181] he spun as Krenn entered, disrupter level. He fired. The doorframe exploded next to Krenn; metal struck him, and the shock wave knocked him down, took the gun from his hand.

  Akhil said, “I knew you’d get out of the freezer,” he said, “but how ... oh. The cargo stage. Kai the Captain.”

  Krenn groped for his disrupter. Akhil fired again, high. Molecules of wall tore themselves apart. “Don’t, Krenn. Don’t force me to kill you. It isn’t necessary. Is Maktai dead?”

  “Not ... quite.”

  “It can be an execution, then. Too bad for Mak, but someone has to die for killing the Human, and it’s not going to be me, and why should it be you? The Navy won’t mind—it’s the Security chief, after all. But it has to be one of us; anyone any lower, and they’d fry us for incompetence.”

  “Why?” Krenn said.

  “You can’t see, can you?” Akhil said, sounding very tired and sad. He gestured at the bathroom door. “How that thing in there has you ... enslaved?”

  “What did you call me?” Krenn said, and almost succeeded in sitting up; but he fell back again.

  “Not willingly,” Akhil said, shaking his head violently. “Maybe it’s psionic, I don’t know. The rest of the race we saw on Earth—we’ll have no trouble with them. But we’re taking this one to the Imperial Council. That just mustn’t happen, Thought Ensign.” Akhil turned back to the door, pressed the cone of his disrupter against the panel, thumbed fire.

  There was an explosion that blew the door out of its frame, throwing Akhil backward in a cloud of steam; he clutched at his face with scalded hands, fell nearly on top of Krenn as a wave of water drenched them both. Krenn grabbed for the Specialist and missed; Akhil crawled away, staggered to his feet, went for the corridor door.

  [182] Krenn found his pistol, pulsed the trigger. The shot shattered a clearprint on the wall. Krenn pulled himself up; his midsection felt like a bowl of lumpy pudding.

  Akhil disappeared through the door. Krenn stumbled after. When he reached the corridor, Akhil was working at one of the Computer Room’s security doors. They dared not use weapons in the machine room, Krenn knew; if Akhil got inside he would have to be pried out with bare hands. And long before that could happen, he could kill Fencer and all of them, by killing Fencer’s brain.

  Krenn braced against the office door, fired. The pistol buzzed dry of charge. Akhil did not even look up from the lock.

  The heavy shielded door moved inward, then slid aside. Krenn tensed to leap; it hurt enough to make him dizzy.

  Kelly stepped around the curve from the portside transporter, pointed Maktai’s pistol and fired. Akhil was slammed against the edge of the door, but stayed on his feet. Kelly shot him again. He took a step, and she ran to where he stood and kicked, Swift-like, to the back of his knee.

  Akhil fell down and did not move.

  Kelly turned to face Krenn; her arm still dangled. Krenn felt hands touching him: Dr. Tagore, his clothing wrinkled and wet but otherwise undamaged, was guiding Krenn to a chair.

  “You weren’t ... in the bathroom.”

  “I closed the drains and opened all the taps, then went out again, closing the door. I’d merely hoped the water would distract him, but Commander Akhil did not even check that the door was not locked.”

  “Klingons always lock doors,” Krenn said. “Where were you?”

  “A custom of my race, in the presence of danger. ... I was underneath the bed.”

  “You almost convinced me,” Krenn said. “I thought you would not fight. It was ... a good trick.”

  [183] “I did not fight,” Dr. Tagore said calmly. “I simply did not allow myself to be too easily killed.”

  And Krenn laughed, not because it was absurd but because he saw the reason of it. “Emanuel ... are you psionic?”

  “No, Krenn. I have been tested, on Vulcan. I am not.”

  “Then Akhil was right,” Krenn said, feeling his senses fading, as in a warm bath. “The Imperial Council must beware. Now that their Imperial Intelligence has failed to protect them. ...”

  “Akhil did not act for II,” Krenn heard, and though he could no longer see, the voice could not be anyone’s but Kelly’s.

  “I do.”

  Krenn and Dr. Tagore were playing klin zha, with Krenn’s set, when the call came to announce that Akhil’s body had been transported into space at maximum beam divergence. Krenn acknowledged and made his next move.

  Dr. Tagore said, “I believe I once told you I had a theory, about the Klingon observance of death.”

  “You did not say what it was.”

  “Well, it isn’t popular among my colleagues. ... At any rate, when one of our race dies, we hold a ceremony, sometimes simple, sometimes very elaborate.”

  “You celebrate a death?”

  “Commemorate, rather.”

  “And the one dead appreciates this.”

  Dr. Tagore smiled thinly, said, “That depends on the culture. But the practical function is to allow the survivors a vent for their grief, a time when emotion may be released, shared.”

  “Sharing diminishes the ... grief?”

  “Such is our experience.”

  Krenn said, “We do not do this.”

  “I know. And I wonder what happens to the energy, [184] the stress. ... I think it helps
to drive your culture. To expand ... to conquer, if you like.”

  “Nal komerex, khesterex,” Krenn said, distracted from the game, annoyed to have even such a small reminder of Maxwell Grandisson III.

  “I know that, too. And your environment is hostile, and your life-cycle is short and rapid. As I say, my hypothesis is not popular.”

  Krenn massaged his jaw.

  “Klingons do not weep, as many races do,” Dr. Tagore said idly. “A different set of facial nerves is stimulated by stress. The Klingon in deep emotion bares his teeth, as if to say ‘stay away, until this feeling is past.’

  “The isolation that results is ... not unknown among Humans.”

  Krenn won the game, congratulated Dr. Tagore on his growing skill at klin zha, and went out.

  He found Kelly in the Officer’s Mess; she was alone, her plate empty, watching the naked stars flow past.

  She did not turn as he approached, and he knew she was being politely deaf; twenty days after the incident there was still a plastic splint on his hip, and he made a good deal of noise in motion.

  He understood, now, why her movements had become deliberate, un-Swift-like: she had been imprisoned in her body for far longer than he would be.

  Now there was a sheathing of surgical plastic on her shoulder, where Fencer’s Surgeon had again replaced the joint with a new metal one. This time it was minor, though. Only the changing-out of a part.

  Krenn sat down. She greeted him.

  Neither of them spoke for a while.

  “I wonder,” Krenn said finally, “what Meth of Imperial Intelligence will say about this whole affair?”

  “Operations Master Meth is never concerned with methods,” Kelly said. “Only results.”

  Krenn nodded, watching her: the curve of her throat, [185] the slant of her white eyes. He reached over and touched her arm, carefully avoiding the nerves.

  She stood, looked at him. Her face was quite empty, though never so dead as Meth’s. “You are the founder of a line,” she said. “I can be no part of that; I am a fusion, and I do not even know what manner of fusion, so that children might be created.”