Collision Course

by William Shatner

  Sam laughed. “No.”

  He watched Jimmy pick up a Pauli-exclusion probe, make an adjustment on its dial, then begin moving it near the circuit connections he had made, all the while monitoring the probe’s tiny display of particle positions.

  “Anyway, duotronics I can do. Transtators…it’s all easy stuff. But quantum bypasses…that kind of thing…I leave that to the experts. I read the manuals, and it’s like reading old Orion—can’t figure it.”

  Sam quietly watched his younger brother’s expert movements, deciding not to remind him that, as far as he knew, quantum technology was usually grown under the direct supervision of powerful artificial intelligence programs in factories floating in interstellar space. Nor did he say that he himself had trouble changing power nodes in his communicator.

  “Okay, done,” his brother said with pride. “Now I can get this off.” He stood up from his stool and put his right hand into the open end of the mesh cylinder. “Sam, reach in from the other side, hold both sides of the module, and squeeze them together.”

  Sam did as instructed. The cylinder was just wide enough for his hands to fit around Jimmy’s wrist. “Now what?” he asked.

  His brother flicked on the cutter Torr had brought him. It was a slender, wand-shaped device, with a small disk at the working end. As a high-pitched whine began to come from it, the disk suddenly glowed blue, then disappeared.

  “Okay,” Kirk said quietly, and Sam could tell he was concentrating. “Got it set for metal crystals, self-cooling, full rejection of soft matter…” He gave Sam a tight smile. “That would be my wrist and your fingers.”

  Then he carefully slipped the cutter into the cylinder and delicately moved the invisible disk toward the top of the module between Sam’s hands.

  Sam was fascinated and had no fear. If anyone knew what he was doing, it was his little brother.

  He felt a mild vibration in the module, and then, almost anticlimactically, the noise stopped and the disk reappeared, no longer glowing.

  “Pull it apart,” his brother said, so Sam did.

  The gray metal bracelet separated like soft candy.

  “Leave the pieces in the cylinder, and that’s that.”

  Sam carefully withdrew his hands from one end as his brother removed his hands and the cutter from the other.

  Kirk rubbed his right wrist, even though the module had never been tight enough to cause discomfort.

  Now Sam felt nervous. “I gotta tell you, Jimmy, I’m half expecting Starfleet Security to beam in any second.”

  Kirk grinned. “No way. The mesh and the four other communicators in there jam the alarm the module’s sending out right now. And that communicator”—he pointed to the Starfleet model—“has a subspace mode, so I used it to retain the link between the identifier circuits in my module and the ones in the Vulcan’s—just like Starfleet programmed them to do in the first place, thank you very much. Right now, the Vulcan tracker is doing the transmitting for both modules, and making it look as if the second signal is coming from about six kilometers away from the first.”

  Sam was pretty sure he understood the basics of what his brother had done—essentially using Starfleet’s own technology against itself. But as much as he respected his brother’s talents, Starfleet wasn’t exactly stupid about this kind of thing.

  “How long until Starfleet figures out what you’ve done?”

  His brother was already carefully replacing every tool in its specific slot and holder, making the bench as neat and ordered as when they had entered the workshop. “They won’t.” He laughed. “Unless that Spock guy decides to disable his own tracker. But no way a Vulcan’s going to do anything illegal, right?”

  “Guess so,” Sam said, not really sure. As far as he’d heard, Vulcans were notoriously dull and rule-bound. But you never knew.

  His brother opened the workshop door and beckoned him. As usual, he was full of energy. “C’mon, driver, I’m late for a date.”

  Sam, as usual, followed in his brother’s wake, trusting that Vulcans were indeed as predictable as Jimmy hoped.

  They weren’t.

  19

  In the mid-twenty-third century, on any aerial approach to San Francisco, the Vulcan compound was unmistakable.

  The city itself was modern, with narrow soaring towers and wide-open green parks and colorful mixed-use plazas. A few older buildings of brick and concrete remained, survivors not of the third world war, which had left most of the city untouched, but of the three major earthquakes that cumulatively had done even more damage than the Great San Andreas Quake of ’42. Geologists were still working hard at adapting Vulcan techniques used to bleed off the mechanical forces of tectonic activity, but for more than a century, now, most earthquakes could be reliably predicted to within a ten-hour window with two to three weeks’ warning. It had been decades since any earthquake had caused major destruction and disruption—additional evidence of the planet’s becoming more and more of a paradise.

  In the midst of the vast blooms and interlinked pathways of thriving vegetation, and the crisp white, silver, and muted tones of contemporary architecture, the Vulcan diplomatic compound was a distinctive patch of crimson and sand—the colors of home for the fifteen hundred aliens who lived and worked there. The blinding-white United Earth Embassy in Shi’Kahr City on Vulcan was no less distinctive in its alien setting.

  One of the buildings in the compound, though, was noticeably different from the others. Instead of the gently up-reaching, softly rounded lines of an ancient aesthetic shaped by the desert winds of Vulcan, it was low, hard-edged, and more reminiscent of an ammunition bunker. For this structure, called, with Vulcan efficiency, Utility Building 2, the logic of physics had overruled that of tradition.

  Within the thick protective walls, the compound’s independent power-generation equipment was housed, along with powerful subspace transmitters in direct contact with the homeworld, and—perhaps most importantly—the compound’s own secure transporter hub, which guaranteed that all personnel would be beamed through quintuply-redundant Vulcan technology, rather than the comparatively reckless triply-redundant systems tolerated by Earthmen.

  In fact, the Vulcan compound’s transporter system was so safe and secure that in more than a century of operation, not one warning alarm had sounded except during training and maintenance drills.

  Until tonight.

  When the radiation alarm sounded in the main control room, two transporter technicians were on duty. Within half a second, they had ended their discussion of nonSurakian modes of logic and begun the test procedures required to determine if the alarm had activated because of a fault in the warning subsystem or because of an actual—and unprecedented—radiation leak.

  All five independent radiation monitor screens displayed on the main console indicated identical levels of high-energy particles leaking from the annular-confinement-beam generator, indicating, in turn, a serious shielding failure that had cascaded through five different protective systems.

  Neither technician understood how that could be possible. But, since they were now being bombarded with enough radiation to have killed a human and to cause themselves troublesome health problems, they swiftly set all controls to a “safe” mode and walked quickly to the main doors. As trained, they would report to the infirmary for radiation treatment while the technicians for the next scheduled shift would don radiation suits and commence repairs.

  Within thirty seconds of the alarm, the main transporter control room was empty and unguarded.

  Thirty seconds after that, Spock walked in. He headed to the main console and inserted a black data card. Three new programs began running in the transporter computers. The first replayed and then altered the security imaging file to show that after the technicians left the chamber, no one else had entered. The second erased the fractal program that had reproduced the effects of a radiation leak in the five different monitoring systems. The third program entered two sets of transport coordinates
into the controls and began a fifteen-second countdown.

  Spock crossed unhurriedly to the transporter platform and stepped onto the right-most lens. Then he waited, hands behind his back.

  A few seconds later, he dissolved into a glittering matter stream and faded from sight.

  Except for his tracking module.

  It landed on the platform when the elementary particles comprising Spock’s right wrist lost cohesion.

  A moment later, the matter stream reformed on the leftmost lens, and Spock reappeared. When movement was possible again, he walked over to retrieve the fallen module and put it into the pocket of his cloak.

  He returned to the console, removed the black data card, and inserted a blue one. The program it contained erased the transporter log.

  Spock pocketed both cards, then left. It had taken him all of ninety seconds to defeat the Starfleet module, and though he knew it was wrong, he felt proud of himself.

  How anyone could mistake him for a human, he just didn’t know.

  On Spacedock, the nine representatives seated around the table in the narrow, windowless conference room were silent. The images on the viewscreen and the charts showing the spread of the atrocities were that disturbing, that alarming.

  The sole reason Mallory’s misleadingly named Department of General Services existed was to deal with those things the regular Starfleet did not have to contend with in its mission of exploration. The fact that his department was not included on most organizational charts, its presence and actions nothing more than a line or two in the yearly allocation reports, did not concern him. Because the universe was not yet as perfect as the leaders of the Federation and of Starfleet wished to see it and tried to make it, it was his responsibility to confront those imperfections.

  So, at this meeting, it was his responsibility to ask the one obvious, and unanswered, question.

  “Could it be Kodos?”

  In the subdued light of the hushed room, eight grave-faced individuals turned from the viewscreen and its dreadful images of children mutilated by Starfleet weapons.

  Facing Mallory were two Starfleet admirals, four civilian analysts, and two elected representatives of the Federation Council, here to provide oversight. Both admirals were regional commanders of the specialized security forces in charge of colonial defense, whose usual most pressing concern was tracking Orion pirates. The civilian analysts were from Starfleet Command, representing expertise in colonial affairs, the history of the Helstrom Nebula Development Region, interstellar treaty law, and deviant psychology. The final two members of the committee were elected representatives from the Federation Council: a human from New Montana, and T’Rev of Vulcan.

  The senior admiral, Elias Mathur, was the first to respond to the possibility Mallory had raised. “You mean, is this warlord they call ‘the general’ and Kodos the Executioner one and the same?”

  “It’s something we must consider,” Mallory said. “Both men are brutal. Both appear to be driven by some strange concept of eugenics. And both use children as their fighting forces.”

  “Governor Kodos used children?” The representative from New Montana was Mer Proctor, a novice, newly appointed to the innocuously named DGS Steering Committee.

  “The reports of the time are unequivocal,” T’Rev explained. He had been a member of this committee for more than ten years, and Vulcans had led the first relief mission to Tarsus IV.

  “In some cases,” he continued, “entire families were destroyed. That is what one would expect if Kodos followed a strict interpretation of eugenics. By killing every member of a family, he would have successfully eliminated undesirable genetic traits from the population pool.

  “However,” T’Rev added without emotion, “the eyewitnesses also report that some of the young were not terminated, even though their parents were. That is not the action of someone following a program of eugenics. That could be construed as an act of recruitment.”

  “But why children?” This time, the question was asked by the civilian specialist from Starfleet’s legal division, Chinatsu Rin, severe in appearance, with stark black hair framing the pale features of one who had grown up in the armored pressure domes of Venus.

  “Several explanations are possible,” T’Rev said. His neutral tone and bland expression gave no indication that he was discussing the brutalization of children. “In terms of the specific conditions on Tarsus IV, Governor Kodos clearly viewed himself as a savior. While his actions were unconscionable, his goal was logical: He wished to save as many colonists as possible. Children require less sustenance than adults. Therefore, for every adult he executed, two children could receive enough food to survive. It was an equation born in madness, but an equation nonetheless.”

  Unlike many at the table, Admiral Mathur was well-versed in the darker realities of interstellar exploration. He folded his hands before him. “What are the other explanations?”

  T’Rev’s explanation was chillingly pragmatic. “For a leader seeking an army willing to do his bidding without question, children’s minds are more malleable. Their thoughts are not complex. They have little sense of their own mortality. They can be coerced by rudimentary expressions of punishment and reward. Perhaps, most importantly, their moral and ethical notions of life are not fully formed, and thus can be shaped by a charismatic leader.”

  The civilian psychologist, Tyler Light, nodded in agreement, one hand absently stroking his gray beard. “All eyewitness accounts confirm that Governor Kodos was extremely compelling. It seems some of those chosen for execution submitted willingly after listening to his rationale.”

  “Though I would argue that this new warlord is insane,” Rin added, “his actions do seem deliberate, his strategy”—the legal specialist gestured to T’Rev—“well thought out, it appears.”

  “But he’s using children to fight his battles.” Darskin Sauder was the second admiral, and he had just been promoted to command rank because of his heroic actions in defusing the Trimega Insurrection without firing a shot—precisely the cool-headed, nonviolent approach Starfleet sought out and rewarded in its officers. Yet Mallory had seen the young man’s face blanch as the images of the recent casualties had appeared on the screen.

  “How is that ‘well thought out’?” Admiral Sauder looked stricken, as if he, personally, were responsible for what had happened. “We all saw the report from Helstrom III. Our security forces slaughtered those…those innocents.”

  Mathur regarded his young fellow officer with compassion.

  “A case of brilliant albeit regrettable tactics. As soon as our senior officer on the ground believed his forces had mistakenly engaged noncombatants, he quite correctly broke off the attack and withdrew so he could ask for new orders. During that withdrawal, the warlord’s second team was able to reach Helstrom III’s undefended power generator and set the charges.”

  Sauder’s voice rose with anger. “So this criminal just…sacrificed those children, knowing what would happen to them?”

  “And nearly succeeded in erasing Helstrom III’s colony, which appears to have been his objective. Keep in mind that at least four other colonies have been destroyed or suffered forced evacuation over the past two years.”

  Ahmed Najoori, a small, quiet scholar unheard until now, held up a hand to draw the others’ attention. “Governor Kodos tried to save Tarsus IV. Do we have any evidence that these new attacks are due to him as well?”

  “I’ve simply raised the possibility, Mr. Najoori,” Mallory said. “We’d be in a better position if we knew this so-called general’s long-term objective. Is there anything of any strategic value among the worlds of the Helstrom Nebula?”

  The civilian historian shook his head. “Twenty-three primary star systems. No indigenous intelligent species. Nine Class-M worlds and two Class-M moons suitable for colonization. Six other worlds suitable for terraforming. Thirty gas giants for raw material…those can be found in almost any system.” He paused, then summed up: “There’re just
planets. Nothing special.”

  Mallory turned to the legal specialist. “Ms. Rin, are any of the Helstrom worlds part of a territorial dispute?”

  She shook her head as well. “With no spacefaring species within fifty light-years, they’re covered by the Babel Expansion Treaty of 2312. Jointly administered by the six Federation worlds closest to the nebula. No disputes. Settled law.”

  Mallory looked around the table at the other eight attendees. “So if it is Kodos who’s behind these attacks, there’s nothing we can point to and say this is what he believes he’s protecting?”

  Mallory’s communicator beeped. He checked the display code—it was his assistant, overriding his privacy lockout. He looked up, disregarding Sally’s summons. This meeting was too important to interrupt and reconvene.

  But no one chose to respond to his question, so Mallory took the lead again. “The Federation will not abandon the remaining colonies in the nebula to a warlord,” he said firmly. “Clearly, we need a next step.”

  “Several steps,” Admiral Mathur said.

  Mallory ignored a second beep from his communicator. “What do you need from us, Admiral?”

  Mathur thought a moment. “The highest priority is to work out some way to predict what the general’s next target will be. We have a lot of firepower in the sector. I can assign more ships over the short term. But first we do have to find out what it is he wants. Then, maybe, we can anticipate his moves.”

  “All right,” Mallory said, “My department will set up a study group at once. What else?”

  “New rules of engagement. What do I tell my people when they’re attacked by children?”

  Mallory had anticipated this question and had made his decision: This was the time to take the wraps off a secret project.