by S. D. Perry
McCoy smiled. “Mouthy?”
Jim smiled back. “Bored.”
It was only a second or two before their smiles faded, as though the weight of their troubles was too great to be suspended any longer, but it was time enough for McCoy to understand how lonely he’d been.
Tell him
No. Not until he’d talked to Karen, not until the outcome was certain.
“Anything else?” Jim asked.
“Actually, there is.” McCoy picked up the data chip. “I found this tucked in one of his boots. I opened it up, but it’s just a bunch of symbols and numbers. The computer couldn’t read it, either.”
Kirk took it from him. “Darres said something about putting his notes into code. He thought he was being targeted because of his investigation into what happened on the Sphinx.”
That explained a few things. No wonder Jim was talking about bugs and computer mistakes-on-purpose.
“Uhura might be able to do something with it,” the captain continued, heading toward the door. “Thanks, Bones.”
“Don’t mention it,” McCoy said. “And Jim . . . I’m sorry about your friend.”
“Me, too,” Jim said.
Chapter Ten
The journey from Deep Space Station M-20 to Starbase 23 was brief and uneventful, and Spock used the time to hypothesize connections between Dr. Kettaract and what had happened to the Sphinx. He considered a wide range of motivations and goals, from Kettaract being in collusion with the Romulans to his stealing the cloaking technology in some plot against the Federation. Obviously, without additional information, not one of his theories could claim a solid foundation of fact—however, he found that the running speculation kept his mind occupied . . . and when new data did present itself, there was always the possibility that it would support a premise he had already structured.
Upon his arrival, the transport and his person were scanned by security personnel, a standard practice for the starbase; its proximity to the Neutral Zone demanded heightened safety measures. When careful scrutiny had classified him as a nonthreat, he was issued a pass and asked to wait while the Romulan commander was informed of his arrival. Because she was a guest of the station, she was not required to submit to any interviews.
Spock was kept waiting for nearly an hour before the commander made her decision, which was to grant him some of her time. He had expected to wait, because he believed that she did not wish to seem overly eager, either to dismiss or accept him. She was a proud woman; she was Romulan.
He was led to her somewhat isolated rooms by the station manager’s aide and left there after a brief lecture concerning disclosure of Starfleet or Federation business, the lecture’s summary being not to do so. He was also informed that while her communications with her own government were monitored for content, her quarters were private.
Standing outside her door, Spock mentally collected himself in preparation for the interview and then signaled his presence.
“Enter,” she said, the sound of her voice surprising him somehow, and he stepped inside.
She was sitting at a small table in the middle of the living space, an empty chair across from her; the room’s padded couch and chairs had been pushed aside. He noted that the air was pleasantly warm, the environment similar to that of his quarters on the Enterprise, and to her own ship.
He turned his attention to the commander, and she returned it evenly, neither of them speaking. As with the sound of her voice, seeing her again was oddly surprising, his body reacting as if to a minor shock—although except for a change in the style of her hair, which was pinned up, she was as he remembered. Elegant, with a presence that demanded attention and respect.
“Hello, Spock,” she said, her tone without inflection. She gestured to the chair opposite her own. “Would you care to sit?”
“Yes, thank you,” he replied, moving to join her. When he was seated, he and the commander again studied one another, his fascination drawn to her eyes. There were complexities there that he had not forgotten, her gaze as disturbing to him as it had been at their first meeting. Disturbing, but not distressing.
“You didn’t say good-bye to me when I left the Enterprise,” she said, gently but with no artifice of kindness. Her voice was deep and tuneful. “Have you come to apologize?”
“That is not the purpose of my visit,” he said. “But if my actions or lack thereof offended you, I apologize.”
She watched him, smiling slightly. “Then I accept. Tell me, what is the reason for your visit? I doubt very much that it’s the pleasure of my company.”
He felt an urge to disagree with her, in spite of the truth of her statement; he suppressed it. “I’ve come to ask for information regarding cloaking technology and the distribution of it within the Romulan Empire.”
Her smile widened, but he could see clearly that anger inspired it. “You’re joking—no, of course you’re not. Why? And what makes you think that I’d want to help you?”
Spock had already considered answers to her questions. “The Enterprise is currently investigating an event which may have involved a cloaking device. There are rumors being passed that your people were involved with this event, in which a number of deaths occurred—but there’s also a possibility that the matter is an internal one. I seek the truth, and would use your answers only for the purposes of defining this investigation. I would not betray your confidence.”
“Really?” she asked airily. “How comforting. And what if I told you that the Empire is planning a hostile invasion of Federation space?”
“Obviously, I have to consider the sanctity of life paramount,” he said.
“Obviously,” she said, watching him intently. “But you still haven’t answered my question. You’ve told me why I should help you . . . but you haven’t yet explained why you feel that I might wish to.”
Spock considered his response carefully. He understood that she was searching for his personal assessment of their relationship, but the truth did not reflect well on his commitment to the Vulcan identity. What made it all the more difficult was that she had made her own feelings clear, all those weeks ago, that she accepted and even encouraged his humanity—at the same time respecting his choice to identify himself as Vulcan. It was an acceptance that he had rarely known, and never from a woman to whom he was attracted.
He had come to ask a favor. He would not lie.
“My hope is that the time we spent together transcended our respective politics,” Spock said. “I feel that you might want to assist me now because the brief intimacy between us contained no betrayal of emotion. The actions surrounding our encounter, my actions, did not honor that connection, but in my mind, the closeness remains untouched by treachery.”
The sharpness of her demeanor softened, her expression relaxing. “I see.”
When she didn’t expand on her understanding, Spock decided to repeat his request. “Will you speak to me regarding cloaking technology?”
The commander sighed. “You tempt me . . . but I’ve known you to lie, Spock, and trusting you now would be idiocy on my part. When I return to Romulan space, I expect to be stripped of my command because of you and your captain. Fortunately, both my bloodline and the Senate’s desire to hold my failures up as an example of Federation deceit put some value on my life, or I would be facing execution as well.”
It was unfortunate that she would not speak with him. He acknowledged his responsibility for her circumstances and prospects. “I am sorry.”
She smiled faintly at him. “Don’t be. You’d be dead by my order if your mission had failed, the Enterprise destroyed. Things are as they are. And though I would like to believe you . . .”
Her eyes narrowed, the sudden change in her face indicating that she’d thought of something to make her trust possible.
“There is a way. Share your mind with me, Spock. If I can know that you’re telling the truth—if we form a link and I see that you can be trusted, that your purpose is not to deceive, I’
ll speak to you.”
Spock saw a tenuous logic to her proposal, although his initial instinct was to reject it. The mindmeld was deeply personal, an intimacy that far surpassed the gentle emotional probings of their last experience . . .
. . . but the information she possesses could be of vital importance—and I have linked before as a matter of furthering a Starfleet agenda . . .
He recognized that he was, in part, seeking a rationalization—because a part of him wanted very much to open up to the commander, to experience her thoughts and feelings as she searched his consciousness for intent. The indulgence was unacceptable, even distasteful; however, refusing the link for personal reasons was even more so. Logically, the reasons for participating outweighed the reasons to resist participation.
“Very well,” he said, committing himself—and was unable to deny an anticipatory flush of thought and sensation as the commander stood and walked to the couch, her apparent indifference to his acquiescence somehow responsible for exciting his curiosity further.
* * *
After giving the coded data chip to Lieutenant Uhura, Kirk went to his quarters and sat for a while, thinking. His sorrow and anger were in balance for a time, but anger gradually began to take over. Gage Darres was dead, and there was no doubt that it was murder, not to him, not after Darres’s call. Scotty had gone to the station to see what he could find, but with as strange and unresolved as things had been lately—Casden, the investigation, Jain and Kettaract—Kirk wasn’t betting on his engineer turning up anything solid.
Gage had it right all along . . . or someone thought he did, someone who wanted to shut him up. But what had Darres actually known? He’d believed that Casden was diehard loyal to Starfleet, that it was a setup—but if so, why? And there was Spock’s unavoidable conclusion, that such an operation absolutely required a conspiracy . . . but who, and how many? What objective was supposed to be served by murdering Casden and his crew?
And now Gage, too, like a cover-up of a cover-up. Whatever was going on, it had to be stopped. Too many had died already.
It kept coming back to the Federation’s recently acquired cloaking technology . . . and that bothered him, for more than one reason. If someone with less than honorable intentions got hold of a cloaking device—which might have already happened—they could do an extraordinary amount of damage, putting lives in jeopardy, even inciting a war among the galaxy’s major powers.
On its own, that was bad enough—but added to the mix was the unhappy possibility that he was to blame, at least partially. Rear Admiral Cartwright might have given the order, but he’d carried it out. He couldn’t disown his part in bringing the technology to the Federation, and even the idea of it made him feel sick. That graviton reading had come from somewhere, and if the Romulans weren’t responsible for what happened to the Sphinx, it seemed likely that the technology had been seized from Starfleet Intelligence. Maybe by Kettaract, maybe by some-body else, but it didn’t really matter; if he hadn’t taken the device, there wouldn’t have been anything to seize.
As it usually did when he was feeling sorry for himself, his internal voice spoke up, taking him to task.
You can brood about it or you can act. Do something, do anything, just don’t sit still wishing things were different.
Kirk stood up from the edge of the bed and walked to his desk, tapping the intercom button as he sat down. “Kirk to bridge.”
“Yes, Captain, this is Lieutenant Uhura.”
“Any luck with that chip, Lieutenant?” He didn’t expect results so soon after giving it to her, but it was worth asking.
“Not yet, sir,” she said, sounding faintly discouraged. “It’s a complicated code.”
“I have faith in you, Lieutenant,” he said. “But take a break for a moment, if you don’t mind—contact Commodore Jefferson at Starbase 27 for me, and pipe it to my quarters . . . and see if you can locate Admiral Cartwright’s current whereabouts, and request an interview. I believe he’s at Starbase 29.”
“Yes, sir. Stand by, please.”
Kirk waited, tapping his fingers on the desktop, not quite sure what he was hoping to find out . . . but the information that Commodore Jefferson had passed along about Casden had to have come from somewhere—and if Darres was right, if the rumors were lies, tracking down the source could be important.
As for Cartwright . . . he’d assigned the Enterprise to retrieve a cloaking device from a Romulan ship, by any means necessary. The mission had been an unusual one, and though Kirk had carried out his orders faithfully and without question, he’d wondered more than once from whom the admiral had received his orders. Cartwright had handed down the assignment without explaining anything, and had struck Kirk as something of a blowhard—
Uhura interrupted his wondering thoughts. “Captain, I’ve reached Starbase 27, but it appears that Commodore Jefferson has been reassigned. I have a Commander Lewis on line with that information.”
Strange. “Put it through.”
Lewis was an older woman with dark hair and an artificial smile, who introduced herself as being in charge of personnel placement for Starbases 25 through 30.
Kirk got straight to the point. “Commander, where’s Commodore Jefferson?”
Lewis shook her head, her expression quickly turning sour. “I don’t know, sir. The whole situation is most irregular—Commodore Jefferson’s placement here was apparently temporary, he was here less than three months and his security status did not require him to explain his business to me.” Her voice had taken on the defensively pedantic tone of a minor bureaucrat, unhappy with being bypassed. “Two days ago, I received the standard 344-B data excusing him from duty, straight from Starfleet Command. No explanation, no sector designation. He left only a few hours after receiving his leave.”
Lewis shook her head again. “Most irregular,” she repeated.
Kirk thanked her and broke the connection, not sure what to think. He wasn’t one for coincidences, but he couldn’t imagine any reasonable alternative—
“Uhura to Captain Kirk. I have Rear Admiral Cartwright standing by, from Starbase 29.”
The communications lieutenant sounded taken aback, and Kirk felt much the same. It usually took hours, even days to get a call back from a man like Cartwright, a high-ranking and highly placed administrator still on his way up. It had been less than ten minutes since he’d asked Uhura to find him.
“Put him through.”
Cartwright appeared on the screen, stiff and unsmiling. “What is it, Captain? I’m a busy man.”
Apparently not that busy. “Of course, Admiral. I was hoping to discuss a recent assignment with you, regarding a Starfleet Intelligence matter—”
“This is a secure line,” Cartwright said, almost derisively. “You can speak freely.”
“Yes, sir,” Kirk said politely, though not without some effort. The admiral wasn’t going to give him any information if he pushed—and like it or not, the man was a superior officer, and deserved some respect. “It’s about the cloaking device. I was curious, sir, about the origins behind that mission. If—”
Cartwright interrupted. “Captain, you did a fine job,” he said, his tone flat and uninterested, as if he was reciting memorized lines. “You should feel proud to have contributed so much to the continued security and safety of the Federation. But your orders have been fulfilled, and Starfleet Intelligence has the ball now. Your part in all that is over—and considering the delicate nature of what transpired, it seems to me that you shouldn’t be concerning yourself any further.”
He smiled then, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Is that all?”
So it seems. “Yes, sir.”
“Fine. Good day, Captain.”
Cartwright faded out, and Kirk stared at the blank screen, thinking that the scope of his concerns just kept growing, his unease deepening, but in a vague, nebulous way that made it nearly impossible to pin down. It seemed like the more information he got, the less things made sense.
He hoped that Spock was having better luck, and that he’d return soon with something that might actually help—because at the moment, Kirk was feeling pretty damned helpless.
She’d thought often of what had happened between them since coming to Starbase 23, the memories of that single day filling her with anger, hurt, disappointment . . . embarrassment, that she’d been so confident of her persuasive skills, and shame that she’d failed so miserably. But there had been other emotions, too, feelings of connection that held meaning for her, now as then—and as Spock sat on the couch beside her, it was that connection she wanted. Her pride had been wounded, but bearing him a grudge for his loyalties was nothing, less than nothing, a useless exercise in useless emotion. He’d done what he’d had to do, just as she had.
Without speaking, his careful gaze taking her in, he reached for her. His fingertips were cool and dry, nestling into her hair and resting against her brow. He moved closer to her, his lips pressing together slightly as he adjusted his touch.
The commander closed her eyes, aware of the heat of his body, the sound of his breathing. She had to be mad, letting this happen, asking for it to happen, she knew it but she didn’t want to put a stop to it, either.
“Relax,” Spock said softly, his voice deep and soothing by its very poise. “Breathe.”
She leaned against the couch’s back, her eyes still closed, amazed to think that this was her reality, that he was touching her and she was willing. She expected that he knew her idea to bond was only partially for the reason she’d stated—and truly, she wouldn’t feel right telling him Empire secrets without being sure of his objectives—but she also suspected that he could pluck the information from her mind if he so chose.
I do this because I wish to know him. Anything else is a pretense.
It was her last clear, focused thought.
She realized faintly that she could no longer hear his breathing, both of them inhaling and exhaling as one. There was a curious sensation of gently falling, drifting, not down but away. Toward.
