Star Trek: The Original Series - 161 - Savage Trade

by Tony Daniel

  “So you think we ought to consider this . . . declaration,” she said, gesturing at the document unrolled upon her desk. “ ‘We hold these rights to be self-evident, that all sentient species are created equal.’ ”

  “It’s certainly an advance over what the Excalbians believed when we last ran into them,” Kirk replied.

  Valek looked up from her examination of the document and turned to Kirk.

  “When you signed this, Captain,” Valek said, “were you trying to humor the Excalbians?”

  “No,” Kirk said after a moment’s consideration. “I agree with them.”

  “They wish to take Zeta Gibraltar and this star system out of the Federation,” Valek replied. “They wish to set up their own government.”

  “With the eventual incorporation as an independent state within the United Federation of Planets,” Kirk said. “Talk to Washington. Hear what he has to say.”

  “He is proposing revolution.”

  “Within the bounds of what he thinks of as natural law,” Kirk said. “Given his assumptions, I think you’ll find that declaration to be entirely logical.”

  “And you, Captain, what do you think about these ‘self-evident truths’ Washington and the other signatories, including you, speak of?”

  “I believe in the right to life and liberty. And when those rights are endangered, I believe in fighting for them.”

  “And the pursuit of happiness, Captain? Isn’t this the cause of most human wars—

  The placing of one group’s happiness over another’s? In my estimation happiness, like all emotion, is a primitive instinct we had best move beyond.”

  And to think, not long ago she was arguing for the complexity and logic behind human nature, Kirk thought. Is she trying to drive me crazy?

  “Happiness can mean a great many things, Valek,” Kirk answered. “It can mean acting wisely and achieving fulfillment. I have no doubt we humans will still be pursuing that sort of happiness until the end of time.”

  “You will be no closer to attaining it, so long as you rely on your emotions to get you there,” Valek said.

  “Thank goodness for the Vulcans, then, Representative Valek,” Kirk replied with a slight smile. “In my opinion, the more our species interact, the better.”

  Kirk was preparing to make a final argument for the New Excalbia Declaration, when his communicator signaled. The captain flipped the communicator open. “Kirk here.”

  “Captain, you wanted us to notify you immediately when our Upsilon Gibraltar expedition reported in,” Uhura said.

  Kirk’s heart made a leap. Sulu and Chekov! They were all right, then.

  He’d been worrying about them for weeks, but had believed and hoped they were fulfilling their mission. A trip into the Vara to locate them would have been fruitless, given the extreme sensor distortion and subspace interference—even if it would not have been a violation of orders. He’d depended on his officers to fulfill their mission and return, and so they had.

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” he said. “That’s fine. What do we hear?”

  “We received an extremely weak subspace message,” Uhura said. “It seems they had a small technical problem.”

  “Are they all right?”

  “Affirmative, Captain,” Uhura said. “They say they will be ready to enter the hangar deck in two point five hours.”

  Something had gone wrong. They must be traveling barely above the speed of light to take so long to arrive after a signal.

  But they were alive, and that was of utmost importance.

  “Notify the transporter room to stand by for my signal,” Kirk said.

  “Aye, sir,” Uhura answered. “They said they have much to report concerning the Upsilon moon and its defensive capacities, Captain.”

  “Interesting,” Kirk said. “If they come through again on the subspace frequencies, be sure to tell them I can’t wait to hear that report. Kirk out.”

  Kirk rose and started to walk away from the conference table so that he could get a clear field for the transporter.

  “I shall be interested in hearing what your officers have observed. It may make a difference on how I respond,” Valek said. “Captain, I believe that with liberty comes responsibility.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Valek nodded. She picked up the declaration, ran a hand over it to flatten it out, and considered its words, handwritten in a beautiful calligraphic style. “The Excalbians’ wish for autonomy I find laudable. But I wonder whether they are truly prepared for the cost.”

  Fourteen

  Captain’s Log, Stardate 6099.9. Lieutenant Sulu and Ensign Chekov have returned from a reconnaissance mission into the heart of the Vara Nebula. After taking a hit, Sulu and Chekov had to limp back on their remaining power. The journey took them five weeks, instead of one day. Anxious they would be too late to deliver their warning, they have arrived in time to report a large L’rah’hane pirate operation. Special commendations to Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu and Ensign Pavel Chekov.

  What do we face, and how much time do we have to prepare?

  “Captain, there is some formidable firepower out there waiting to strike,” Sulu said. He and Chekov had reported directly to the briefing room, knowing the captain would want to hear their report the moment they stepped off the Kepler. Kirk was amazed at how much of a professional appearance they’d managed to maintain after five weeks in a shuttlecraft. Contrary to regulations (although Kirk was inclined to let it slide), they had engaged in a beard-growing contest for the past five weeks. Chekov had definitely won: his thick beard gave him the appearance of a small bear. Sulu had, however, taken the mustache award. He’d even managed to put a sinister curl onto the ends of his.

  “The L’rah’hane appeared to be gathering every ship they could,” Chekov continued. “It was a very strange collection of vessels.

  “They were waiting for something. Since we had time on our hands, we went through every piece of data we’d collected, including a few ship-to-ship intercepts. It took some doing, but one captain was apparently trying to impress another that they would have sufficient firepower to take on the Enterprise. They passed on a set of basic schematics for the big ships on the way, particularly indicating weaponry.”

  “That vessel, and the space hub, match the records for Hradrian war ships and naval installations,” said Sulu. “Mister Chekov provided some excellent helmsmanship, and we were able to get extensive scans of all the exterior systems on the depot hub, as well—including its weapon systems. It’s well armed, but tended by robots. We know exactly what we’re up against there, sir.”

  “Extraordinary work, both of you,” Kirk replied.

  “There’s something else, sir,” Chekov said. “We spent much of the journey back trying to puzzle out one weapon system we believe the depot hub possesses. I could make neither heads nor tails of it. Mister Sulu may have an idea, however.”

  “Sulu?”

  “Unsure, Captain,” the helmsman replied. “There were some interesting observational anomalies in the vicinity of the emplacement.”

  “What sort of anomalies?”

  “Puzzling difficulties in measuring specific dimensions under extreme resolution,” Sulu said. “It was almost as if our view of the device was smeared, across space and time. My best guess based on the analysis is that this weapon array corresponds with the quantum device that Mister Spock was examining.”

  “Do you think that this pirate base may be using this device, whatever it is, as a weapon?”

  “I’d say it’s a strong possibility, Captain. And given that the ships due to rendezvous are also of Hradrian design, it would be a fair bet that they’ll have the same weaponized technology.”

  “All right. Good work.” Kirk put a hand to his chin. “Go over your data with Mister Spock. The Excalbian Franklin is on board serving as the New Excalbia Assembly liaison. Get him in on it, too. I want to know what we’re up against.”

  “Aye, sir.”
r />   “And gentlemen?”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Be careful shaving.” He turned to Chekov. “You may have to take a phaser to that rug, Mister Chekov.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Dismissed.” Sulu and Chekov exited. Kirk called up the Vara Nebula on the conference room triviewer and gazed at it for a long moment.

  The Hradrian slave empire.

  Well, if it turns out they are remerging from whatever hole they crawled into, I’m going to do my best to send them back to the land of myth and legend.

  * * *

  The Excalbians had first began beaming to and from the captured L’rah’hane ships as part of the joint project between Watt and Scott to create a point-defense system for Zeta Gibraltar. The ships were presently in orbit, but whether they would remain there, or be taken farther into Federation territory for study, had not yet been decided by Starfleet.

  Yet so long as they were in orbit, they served as excellent surveillance platforms for threats coming from the nebula. It was only a matter of installing a simple long-range sensor in each vessel, then linking each sensor via computer to form a larger observational network. Even though the sensors were attuned to subspace, tachyonic frequencies, the principle of linking multiple antennae together to make a huge virtual lens, had been in use since the dawn of the information age on Earth.

  Groups of three or four Excalbians had beamed aboard each of the four L’rah’hane ships, checked in with the vessel’s skeleton crew from the Enterprise, then got to work. The Enterprise crews consisted of five duty officers taking rotating shifts. Most of the ships’ orbital maintenance functions had been slaved to the Enterprise computer, which was remotely carrying out the basic attitudinal changes necessary to keep the ships in steady paths.

  The Enterprise crews were spending their time scanning the few remaining bits of L’rah’hane hardware that hadn’t been cataloged and analyzed. Some, when off duty, volunteered to help out the Excalbians with their installation procedures.

  The comings and going of the Excalbians were soon so commonplace that no one noticed when larger groups beamed aboard each ship during one duty shift that corresponded to early morning at the outpost. In fact, except for those standing early watch, most of the L’rah’hane skeleton crews were in their temporary bunks, asleep.

  In the renamed Victory, the L’rah’hane warship that served as the de facto flagship of the captured L’rah’hane “fleet,” the Starfleet crew were quite surprised to be awakened to the sound of a phaser on overload over the ship’s interior communication speakers. The weapon was one step away from explosion—something that would take a good part of an L’rah’hane ship’s deck with it.

  “Attention Starfleet crew,” said a commanding voice over the ship’s interior communication system. “We wish no harm to come to any Starfleet personnel. We do require, however, that all Starfleet crew evacuate, as this ship is now the property of the New Excalbia Navy.”

  There was no mistaking the voice. It was that of Admiral Horatio Nelson.

  “We judge that, due to the placement, the overload of a single phaser will not immediately endanger you, but it will jeopardize the integrity of the ship if the phaser should be allowed to reach super-critical and explode. You would then be forced to evacuate in any case, but from a damaged ship—a ship whose orbit will decay until it burns in the atmosphere. No one wants this.”

  Aidan Ripoll, the lieutenant in command of the Enterprise crew aboard the Victory, rolled out of his bunk and slammed a finger into the intraship control. “Sir, with all due respect, what the hell are you trying to accomplish?”

  “We are requisitioning this ship in the name of the New Excalbia Assembly for use in the defense of this system against outside attack.”

  “New Excalbia Assembly? What are you talking about?”

  “We wish no trouble,” said Nelson. “But we are committed to occupying this ship in the name of New Excalbia and would in no way wish to bring harm to you or any other United Federation of Planets citizen. The New Excalbia Assembly wishes peace and alliance with the Federation and all its peoples.”

  “You are its ‘peoples,’ as far as I knew,” said Ripoll.

  “This is no longer the case,” Nelson replied. “Now, if you will ready your crew, we will send you back to the Enterprise, no harm done.”

  “Except to my career,” Ripoll muttered. He rubbed his eyes, stiffened into a ready stance, then pressed the send button once again. “We will do nothing of the sort, Admiral. Furthermore, I order you to deactivate that overloaded phaser at once.”

  Around Ripoll in the crew quarters his three bunkmates were waking up, groggy but quickly snapping to alert once they realized what was happening.

  “Lieutenant Ripoll, this is, as I believe they say, above your compensation grade,” Nelson replied in a calm, almost compassionate, voice.

  Suddenly the door to the crew quarters cranked open—the L’rah’hane portals were extraordinarily noisy—and five Excalbians stood in the entranceway. Sailors and military sorts. One of them was Nelson. Ripoll also recognized John Paul Jones and Captain Bligh among them. They had Ensign Gregg between them, the single member of Ripoll’s team he’d left standing watch on the bridge. Bligh nudged Gregg in the small of the back, and he came into the room to join the other members of the Enterprise crew now gathered in a tight group behind Ripoll. They were obviously bracing for a fight.

  “Lieutenant Ripoll, gather your crew immediately and prepare to depart,” Nelson said. “The overloaded phaser is set to go super-critical in ten minutes.”

  “Where the hell did you put it? The engine room?”

  “Of course not. But it does threaten critical systems,” Nelson said. “You must come at once.”

  “What I must do is check in with my superiors.”

  “By all means, do so, but do it quickly.”

  Ripoll took his communicator and flipped it opened. “Ripoll to Enterprise.”

  “Enterprise here, Lieutenant,” came Lieutenant Uhura’s voice over the communicator speaker.

  Ripoll explained the situation as quickly as he could.

  “Please stand by while I inform the captain,” said Uhura.

  “Lieutenant, please! We’ve been ordered to evacuate, and I think that you should patch me directly through.”

  Uhura’s voice grew colder. He could just see her bristling as she spoke to him. “You tell those Excalbians that if they want to speak with Captain James T. Kirk, they’re going to have to hold off going forward with this insanely destructive project until I can reach and notifiy him.” Then Uhura cut off communication with a curt and wholly unamused, “Enterprise out.”

  Ripoll turned to Nelson. “You heard the lieutenant,” he said. “My hands are tied until I can speak with the captain.”

  “Very well,” Nelson said, looking a bit chagrined after facing Uhura’s dismissal. “In that case, perhaps we can come to an agreement ourselves. We will deactivate the phaser if you agree to allow us to occupy navigation stations on the bridge. You will retain control of all weaponry stations, so there should be no fear that we would even consider using this vessel in an offensive manner. You know as well as I do that the Enterprise’s computer has almost entirely taken over navigation.”

  “I also know that you know where the manual override controls are located, Admiral.”

  Nelson smiled. “Very good, Lieutenant,” he said. “Why don’t we have two men standing by in that station, one of yours and one of mine?”

  Ripoll considered. “Deactivate the phaser as a show of good faith.”

  Nelson nodded toward John Paul Jones. “Captain, if you please.”

  Jones smiled slyly. He took a recording device from his great coat pocket. It was tied to a communication receiver. “An effective sound effect, don’t you think?” he said.

  Nelson turned back to Ripoll and shrugged. “We needed to get your attention.”

  “And so you sneak aboard and at
tempt to commandeer my ship.”

  “Your ship, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, Admiral,” said Ripoll. “I don’t want to lose my first command!”

  Nelson smiled sympathetically. “Of course, no captain wants such a mark upon his record. You will not have one if we can come to an agreement,” he said. “The only way you will leave this vessel is under orders of your captain, I assure you.” Nelson motioned for Ripoll to sit down in the quarters’s only chair. When he did so, Nelson went and took a seat on the edge of a bed. Ripoll motioned the other members of his crew to stand down.

  “Let me tell you about my own first command, Lieutenant,” said Nelson. “I was a very green lad indeed at the time and made some basic mistakes that I believe you will find diverting. I must admit to finding them amusing myself, if only in the recounting.”

  Ripoll noticeably relaxed. “I suppose we can wait until the captain gets back to me, Admiral Nelson,” he said. “So long as no harm is done. I would very much enjoy hearing about your time aboard the Albemarle, your first command.”

  “Excellent,” said Nelson. “Only this was long before the Albemarle, oh yes. This happened when I, as a very green ensign, was placed in charge of a prize vessel. I discovered that I had brought aboard neither compass nor ship’s clock, assuming I’d find both on the vessel.”

  “You didn’t,” said Ripoll with a smile.

  “Indeed I did not. They were wrecked,” Nelson answered. “Unfortunately my ship had by this time moved out of signaling range and was about to sail over the horizon.”

  “We had an emergency procedure exercise a lot like that at the Academy,” Ripoll said. “I failed it three times in a row before I finally studied up on how to rig a temporary subspace radio. I know you didn’t have that option, so what did you do?”

  “Therein lies a tale,” Nelson said. He took off his hat and placed it on his lap. His hair was curly and black, with gray beginning to mix throughout. It was long and tied back with a ribbon. “A tale—and an inadvertent adventure.”

  Nelson began to recount his first great adventure.