“You’re aboard the Federation Starship Titan,” Dr. Ree said.
“The captain just told me he’s coming down from the bridge to speak with you. Our senior diplomatic officer will accompany him.”
“Tie-tan,” S’syrixx said, doing his best to pronounce the strange syllables as he heard them.
S’syrixx carefully pushed himself the rest of the way up into a sitting position and allowed his bare, scale-covered feet to swing over the side of the surprisingly sturdy little infirmary bed. He was determined to make a good first impression with this vessel’s captain, as well as to demonstrate his gratitude to the person who was ultimately responsible for his rescue.
“My name,” he said, “is S’syrixx.”
Ree displayed an impressive assemblage of long, sharp teeth. “Welcome aboard, S’syrixx.”
S’syrixx heard a brief pneumatic hiss, which drew his attention to an open doorway that hadn’t been in his line of sight before.
A pair of uniformed humanoids entered the chamber and slowly approached the bed. S’syrixx suddenly felt unsteady. Had something gone wrong with the ship’s environmental systems, or its artificial gravity generators? His claws tore into the bed’s edges as he hung on, suddenly desperate to steady himself.
The room spun, and he felt long, scale-covered fingers and forelimbs pushing him gently back onto the bed.
“Mammals,” he muttered as darkness made another bid for him. “Why did it have to be mammals?”
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ISBN 978-1-4391-6782-3
ISBN 978-1-4391-6796-0 (ebook)
For Marco Palmieri, who first handed me the keys to Titan, and for Margaret Clark, who invited me back aboard for the current mission.
Historian’s Note
This story begins in early 2381, during the time of the mass Borg assault recounted in the Destiny trilogy, and concludes in late August 2382, more than a year later (roughly coinciding with the principal time frame of Star Trek: Typhon Pact—Zero Sum Game).
Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.
—CLARENCE DARROW
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
—WILLIAM BLAKE, “THE TIGER,” Songs of Experience
Prologue
WARRIOR-CASTE HATCHERY CRÈCHE P152, SAZSSGRERRN, GORN HEGEMONY
First Myrmidon Gog’resssh stood upon the observation footbridge that overlooked the enclosed vastness of the incubation chamber. His claws encircling the railings, Gog’resssh recalled the first time he’d looked upon the room from this high, deceptively solid perch; he’d found the sight almost overwhelming. Apart from the immensity of the starlit nights that blanketed the three Gorn worlds where he’d dwelled throughout his span of twenty-eight Gornar suncircuits, he had never before experienced such sheer hugeness. The great translucent roof that soared overhead had created an irresistible urge to crane his head in every direction, leaving his thick neck pained afterward by several strained muscles.
Far beneath the dome, which admitted only the most benign frequencies of light from Sazssgrerrn’s yellow-white star, stood legions of eggs—the leathery husks that held the developing offspring of the Gorn Hegemony’s warrior caste. Row upon row of ovoid shapes, each roughly the size of a mature warrior’s head, rested in their individual warming chambers, their numbers multiplied out to infinity by the reflective properties of the enclosure’s rounded walls. Gog’resssh took quiet comfort from the humid, sultry air that wafted up around the footbridge out of the chamber below, where it nurtured the orderly, greenish-white ranks of the eggs. Those rows of enshelled younglings represented the future—a future that Gog’resssh was committed to safeguarding from any threat that might arise between now and the day those younglings acquired the ability to fend for themselves.
Gog’resssh reveled in the anticipatory stillness of the eggs, which he likened to sentries standing an unrelieved, almost one-suncircuit-long duty shift; he regarded their apparently endless vigil as a positive augury—a portent of the disciplined Gorn shock troops they would one day become. Their first tour of duty would begin a mere handful of diurnal cycles after the growing fetuses finished clawing through their protective membranes; they would embark upon the rigorous, lifelong regimen of training and combat that was their elite military-caste birthright almost immediately after their emergence into the world.
Today, however, nearly two local suncircuits into his current tour of crèche-guardian duty, Gog’resssh looked upon the vista arrayed across the sprawling incubation floor beneath him with a far more jaundiced eye than had been his wont on that memorable first diurnal cycle at Sazssgrerrn. What he had once found awe-inspiring now seemed almost quotidian, a font of impatience and ennui rather than a source of wonder and fulfillment.
Of course, Gog’resssh was careful not to articulate any such thought aloud, particularly so close to the workspaces of so many technological- and artisan-caste types, some of whom were no doubt inclined to send unfavorable reports about him to his military-caste superiors. Fortunately, the many adjacent environmental-regulation stations, offices, and laboratories were silent today, as though the staff had decided to take the morning off.
It was odd, if also incidentally something of a relief, to find the crèche’s nerve center all but deserted on what should have been a typical workday. Although he was duty-bound to protect the tech-casters, Gog’resssh nevertheless found that their relatively large numbers, close proximity, and overall omnipresence grated on him.
Gog’resssh tensed as he suddenly became aware of a familiar, reedy voice just behind him. “I see that you remain troubled, First Myrmidon Gog’resssh. Were your higher-rankers unable to give you any reassurance?”
The warrior silently cursed himself for allowing the voice’s owner to approach him so closely without being noticed. He turned quickly toward the speaker, an elderly member of the technological caste, and carefully avoided staring directly into his eyes for any longer than a moment or two. Althoug
h the scientist’s two golden orbs stared out in typical Gorn fashion from beneath heavy crests on either side of his skull, they lacked the hundreds of facets that comprised a warrior’s motion-oriented compound eye; instead each visual organ displayed a single, eerily mammalian-looking vertical pupil.
Keeping his voice as guttural and inflectionless as possible, Gog’resssh said, “Why do you believe me to be troubled, Doctor Rreszsesrr?”
“Because your back is bowed as though it bears the weight of worlds,” the oldster said, speaking as though he were describing some matter of indisputable fact, such as the behavior of objects falling inside a gravitational field.
Straightening his spine, Gog’resssh treated Rreszsesrr to a contemptuous glower before he focused his gaze back upon the apparent infinitude of warrior eggs that spread out in all directions beneath the polysteel footbridge. “Nonsense, Doctor. My back is no more bowed now than it has ever been.”
“Then the time you have spent living among us technologists has affected you more profoundly than you realize,” Rreszsesrr said. “For instance, you appear to have acquired our alleged inability to tell convincing lies.”
Gog’resssh felt the scales on his crest tighten slightly; he had to struggle consciously to prevent them from bristling forward into an obviously aggressive posture. His annoyance at the oldster for being right only increased the difficulty of the effort.
“I have lied to no one, Doctor,” the warrior said. “I have broken no oath. And I will do my duty to the Hegemony, exactly as my superiors have ordered.”
“But I sense you are doing so only under protest.”
“What have I to protest, Doctor? Protecting the next generation is one of the worthiest of tasks. And it is a task that can be done properly only by members of the strongest of Gorn castes.” Gog’resssh gestured with one five-clawed manus toward the multitude of gestating eggs below. “Or so the Hegemonic High Command tells me.”
Rreszsesrr spread both of his complexly articulated forelimbs before him, the short claws on each of his three-fingered hands contrasting sharply with Gog’resssh’s larger, blunter, and far deadlier-looking talons. “Your misgivings are understandable, First Myrmidon. Even by a member of the technological caste.”
“I do the work of the Great Egg Bringer S’Yahazah on this crècheworld, Doctor. I harbor no misgivings whatsoever about serving here.”
Rreszsesrr regarded him with what looked to the warrior like vague amusement. “Don’t you? Your fellow warriors are fighting and bleeding as we speak, out beyond the Hegemony’s furthest reaches. I know that they are attempting even now to repel an invasion fleet that has so far cut through friend and foe alike as easily as a Gorn landing trooper’s killclaws can gut beached lakeprey.”
“The machine-mammals and their cube vessels,” Gog’resssh said, doing his best to keep his words free of bitterness. He could no longer deny the essential truth of the oldster’s words. I should be out there now in the Great Cyan Starcrèches with my warrior brethren and their new alien allies, he thought. To send those unnatural creatures back to whatever cursed mammalian underworld burrow spawned them.
Rreszsesrr’s head bobbed in affirmation atop his relatively narrow neck. “Yes. The B’orrg. The enemy that you and every other warrior now stationed on this world would rather face right now. It would be far better, would it not? Certainly far preferable to standing guard at what most of you regard as a mere backwater hatchery world.”
Leave it alone, Doctor, Gog’resssh thought, carefully swallowing his emotions to avoid lending any credence to the scientist’s thesis. He momentarily considered demanding an explanation for the oldster’s intimate knowledge of confidential Gorn military matters, but held himself back; Rreszsesrr was a highly accomplished member of the technological caste, so his ability to obtain classified information really shouldn’t have been all that surprising.
“As I have said, I will do my duty to the Hegemony, without question,” Gog’resssh said at length.
“Of that I have no doubt,” Rreszsesrr said even as his forked tongue slithered quickly past his lips twice, a gesture of obvious skepticism. For one who had access to so many sensitive technological secrets, the old scientist had great difficulty concealing unspoken truths; Gog’resssh found him easy to read, even for a tech-caster. “But asking questions is no breach of discipline, Gog’resssh. Perhaps if more of your peers could find it in themselves to make the occasional harmless query, then perhaps the rest of your garrison would be less restive and angry.”
Gog’resssh attempted to look pleasant. “What are you talking about, Doctor?”
“I mean that far too many of you crècheguardians do not appear to appreciate how critically important this hatchery world is to the continued survival and health of the entire Gorn Hegemony.”
“Of course this world is important. All the hatchery worlds are important.” Of course, Gog’resssh found it debatable that the importance of protecting this particular hatchery world was in any way comparable to the urgent need to mobilize every available Gorn warrior against the marauding machine-mammals. “But important or not, when the Hegemonic High Command sends me to protect any such place, I shall do as I am bid.” No matter how many Gorn worlds fall before the machine-mammal onslaught as a consequence.
“I do not doubt the truth of that either, First Myrmidon. You warrior-casters are creatures of duty, and the political caste in particular is quite content to exploit this fact. I am simply wondering whether your superiors ever told you why this particular world is so uniquely important to us as a species.”
Gog’resssh bared a good many of his meticulously sharpened teeth. “The Hegemonic High Command is not obliged to furnish its servants with rationales or explanations for its orders.”
The oldster made a huffing exhalation, perhaps to demonstrate his impatience with the military worldview. Gog’resssh tried not to take offense, reminding himself that the scientist was a product of a nonmilitary caste, which made him infinitely less disciplined by definition.
“Indeed,” Rreszsesrr said. “But explanations are my stock in trade, and the same may be said for most of my crèchebrethren. And an explanation is definitely in order here, no matter what your superiors may have decided to tell you—or, conversely, to withhold from you.”
Gog’resssh allowed his nostrils to flare and bared several more of his very sharpest teeth. “You would dare to question the wisdom of the upper echelons of the warrior caste?”
“I do not answer to any echelon of the warrior caste, my good young fellow,” Rreszsesrr said, taking no apparent notice of Gog’resssh’s rising indignation. “And in my judgment, you need to understand why this world is so especially important—specifically to your caste, if only indirectly to mine. You see, this place requires warrior protection as no other Gorn hatchery planet does. For without this planet, the entire Hegemony would quickly find itself defenseless.”
The oldster was speaking in increasingly eccentric circles. “What are you talking about?” Gog’resssh said, repeating his earlier question in more demanding tones.
“All of the non-warrior castes have established their respective reproduction crèches on multiple worlds all across the Hegemony,” Rreszsesrr said. “But the eggs that nourish and protect you warriors as they grow from blastocyst to hatchling will grow properly only here, on Sazssgrerrn. Nowhere else.”
The notion struck Gog’resssh as entirely preposterous. “Why would the High Command tolerate such a liability?”
“It isn’t as though your superiors have any choice in the matter, First Myrmidon. The environmental requirements of your caste are extremely exacting, much more so than any other caste. Worlds appropriate to the warrior caste’s unique nutritional requirements and gestational vulnerabilities have always been rarer than mammal-gizzards. Even the world upon which our people were believed to have evolved originally is no longer climatically fit to serve as a warrior-caste hatchery.”
Although Gog’resssh
found the old scientist’s story incredible, he felt a chill settle deep inside his guts nonetheless. What if this addled ancient’s ravings were true?
“Why would the High Command conceal such a terrible weakness from the rank and file of the warrior caste?”
“Who knows, First Myrmidon? Perhaps they reasoned that a weakness of which no warrior is aware is a weakness that cannot be revealed inadvertently to an enemy.”
Gog’resssh thought that made a certain amount of sense, although it was hard for him to imagine a Gorn warrior worthy of the description revealing a military secret of any kind to an enemy, be it by accident or as a consequence of torture.
And Rreszsesrr’s explanation left behind another vexing question as well.
“Why are you telling me this?” Gog’resssh asked, the scales on his head crests slowly standing up as if in expectation of imminent combat.
Frustratingly, Rreszsesrr still appeared utterly unintimidated. “Because, regardless of your superiors’ decisions, I believe that you . . . need to know.”
“All right,” the warrior said. “But why do I need to know it now? Why did you fail to tell me this story—if indeed it is anything more than merely a story—two local suncircuits ago, when my tour of duty here began?”
Despite the scientist’s pretense of openness, Gog’resssh knew that Rreszsesrr was holding back something else, something crucial. In his own way, the oldster was doling out information on a “need to know” basis himself, just as the Hegemonic High Command that he so clearly enjoyed criticizing had always done.
“Something is happening to Sazssgrerrn’s primary,” the scientist said after a brief pause.
Primary. It took Gog’resssh a moment to understand. “You speak of the sun that shines upon this world.” Why couldn’t technologists ever speak plainly?
“Yes. I have explained to you the long-term variable nature of this star, have I not?”
“You have. I did not understand much of your explanation. But I did gather that the star’s radiation output can change greatly over periods of many millions of suncircuits.”
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire Page 1
