Wonderful, Riker thought, taking his seat. “How soon can we expect them?”
In answer to Vale’s questioning glance, Tuvok quickly consulted his console and said, “ETA is approximately one standard day.”
Riker allowed himself to frown. “Whose ships are they? More Gorn?”
“It’s a mixed bag, sir,” Vale said. “We’re definitely reading Gorn warp signatures among them. But there are also Breen, Kinshaya, Tholian, Tzenkethi, and even Romulan readings in there as well.”
“The entire Typhon Pact,” Deanna said, standing beside her seat at Riker’s left side. “Showing their colors.”
Vale leaned toward Riker. “You don’t suppose Starfleet just might come through for us with about that many reinforcements in, say, the next day or so?” she deadpanned.
“No,” Riker said with a gallows chuckle. “Do you?”
“Of course not. Just making sure we’re both on the same grim, fatalistic page as always. It’s my way of fully embracing reality.”
“Sometimes,” Deanna said archly, “I’d prefer that reality and I just remain close platonic friends.”
“One thing’s for sure,” Vale said, her tone suddenly sounding as serious as a heart attack. “If we’re going to sneak an away team to Hranrar and back, the time to do it is now.”
The clock was ticking. The time for waiting had passed. Riker knew that if he were to abandon Hranrar in order to save Titan and her crew, no one would fault him for his decision. After all, all his other options involved more or less intolerable degrees of risk, particularly with an incoming Typhon Pact fleet only a day away.
So he made the obvious choice.
True to his word at the last senior staff meeting, Xin Ra-Havreii and his engineering team had devised an ingenious way to reach the surface of Hranrar with only the most minimal risk of detection by Captain Krassrr’s terraforming flotilla.
Of course, Christine Vale would have felt a good deal more confidence in Ra-Havreii’s confidence were he beside her now, harnessed as she was into one of the seats aboard the shuddering, bucking shuttlecraft Beiderbecke as it made its ballistic descent to the nearest of the five small moons that orbited Hranrar, just beyond the planet’s complex ring system.
A voice shouted out from the Beiderbecke’s forward section, barely audible over the rumbling of the shuttle as it aerobraked in the moon’s surprisingly dense atmosphere. “Away team!” cried Ensign Olivia Bolaji, the shuttle pilot. “Are all of you still with me?”
To prevent straining her neck muscles by turning to look at her teammates during the jouncing deceleration, Vale contented herself with closing her eyes and listening to their responses.
Deanna Troi groaned, prompting Vale to imagine that she might soon need a change of uniform.
“This is fun,” quipped Lieutenant Gian Sortollo from security. “I wanna go again.”
Ensign Modan, the cryptolinguist, intoned a crisp, “Present!”
Ensigns Dakal and Evesh, sensor analyst and sensor technician respectively, seemed only able to make moist coughing sounds. It was probably getting a bit messy back there.
“Don’t feel bad, kids,” Vale said as she barely restrained her own stomach from performing an inconvenient triple lindy of its own. “You’re in noble company. Some of Earth’s first lunar explorers chundered all the way to the Moon and back.” It could be worse, she told herself. They could be yarking in microgravity. The thought of blobs of vomit tumbling everywhichway in freefall almost made her join the chorus.
At that moment the Beiderbecke slammed hard into a particularly treacherous pocket of turbulence, which slammed Vale’s teeth together painfully. Why did I pick a shuttlecraft named after a self-destructive cornet player? she thought, hoping that the choice wasn’t subtle evidence that she was carrying a death wish. Her conscious intention had been to press the Beiderbecke back into the kind of service the little craft had performed the first time she’d been summoned out of Titan’s shuttlebay two: the mass rescue of aliens threatened with imminent destruction. She made a mental note to discuss the matter later with Deanna.
Assuming that either of them still had a later coming.
U.S.S. TITAN
When S’syrixx’s senses returned to him, his first sensation was a feeling of intense astonishment even to be alive. He found himself in a semidarkened chamber, apparently alone. Despite the scant illumination, he could see well enough to judge it a living space, austerely decorated yet obviously inhabited by someone—living quarters no doubt designed for the comfort of Tie-tan’s mixed mammalian-reptiloid-alien crew. Realizing that he was lying supine on a large, surprisingly sturdy bed, he stood up and faced the nearest wall. His swift, sinuous movements placed him before a broad, rounded oblong window that displayed the star-strewn darkness into which he’d expected again to be cast.
Why hadn’t the mammals taken the rational expedient of simply spacing him after what he had done? S’syrixx realized that his understanding of the mammal Rry’kurr was incomplete at best. Perhaps there was more to this creature than mere manipulation and deception, despite S’syrixx’s most base-level expectations—and despite Rry’kurr’s evident cleverness.
Was it possible that Rry’kurr’s expression of concern for the imperiled Hranrarii had been sincere?
A flicker of movement at the base of the window caught his attention, and the scales on his dual cranial crests stood erect in response to his startle instinct. He felt foolish mere heartbeats later when he realized that the motion had come from a framed holographic image that someone—doubtless the room’s usual occupant—had left perched on the narrow ledge at the window’s bottom.
S’syrixx reached down and carefully lifted the frame to get a clearer look at the image within. He saw a pair of horn-headed reptiloid creatures, both of whom strongly resembled one of the non-mammals he had encountered in Tie-tan’s sickbay. The two beings faced each other in combat crouches, each clutching edged metal weapons. Every few heartbeats, the image would shift, depicting the duo engaging in what appeared to be a series of carefully choreographed combat exercises. Despite the obvious martial nature of the motions, S’syrixx saw none of the combat-fury that a Gorn war-caster might display during such activities.
A voice sounded behind him, startling S’syrixx yet again. “Her name was Sar Antillea.” S’syrixx allowed the framed image to tumble to the carpeted floor as he turned to face the unexpected speaker. A barefoot yet Sst’rfleet uniform-clad reptiloid creature stood facing him from an entrance on the opposite side of the chamber, its short-clawed manus both spread before it in an I’m-no-threat-to-you gesture. S’syrixx inhaled deeply, but sensed no deception in the air, just as he saw no weapon on the creature’s hip. Though he’d been exposed to the being’s scent only once before, S’syrixx recognized it at once, along with its faint echoes, which he now noticed were part of the room’s olfactory backdrop.
“Qontallium,” S’syrixx said.
“Yes,” the security officer said. “But you may feel free to address me by my first name. After all, we’re kindred souls, at least in a manner of speaking. So you may call me ‘Qur.’ Welcome to my quarters. They will be yours for the duration of your stay aboard Titan.”
S’syrixx nodded. “Thank you, Qurr,” he said, maintaining his natural Gorn gutturality along with its tendency to transform many phonemes into protracted growls. He had always found it difficult to render non-Gorn names accurately without employing his caste-specific Voice talents to copy another speaker’s pitch, emphasis, timbre, and rhythmic qualities. After his spectacular failure to get himself away from Tie-tan by replicating Rry’kurr’s voice, he wasn’t eager to call undue attention to his Voice abilities.
“I’m glad to see that you’re none the worse for wear,” Qontallium said, approaching S’syrixx slowly.
“I hope that is so,” S’syrixx said drily. He lowered his guard somewhat, but not entirely. “Your captain dosed me with some sort of toxic gas. I am not certain exactly
what it did to me.”
“Doctor Ree has pronounced you fit. And speaking of the captain, he has authorized me to inform you of his decision regarding your formal request for asylum aboard Titan.”
S’syrixx tensed. Perhaps Rry’kurr allowed me to regain consciousness with such a spectacular view of trackless space, he thought, merely to tell me I’d have been better off had he simply allowed me to die out there in the first place.
Bracing himself for the inevitable bad news, he said, “And what has Rry’kurr decided?”
“He has granted your request,” Qontallium said in a tone that suggested pride. “You will now receive the official diplomatic protection of the officers and crew of the U.S.S. Titan, Starfleet, and the United Federation of Planets. Provided that you—how did the captain put it? ‘Mind your manners, behave yourself, and refrain from giving me any more goddamned grief’ for the duration of this emergency.”
S’syrixx tried not to display any surprise, allowing his ruffled crest-scales to settle down as he struggled to process the stunning news. Could any mammal—even one of such obviously exceptional cleverness as Rry’kurr—really possess such a surfeit of altruism? Or was this merely evidence of a hidden agenda? Though he was loath to say anything that might jeopardize his hosts’ goodwill, S’syrixx couldn’t resist probing the latter possibility, at least a little.
“Why did Rry’kurr send you to inform me of his decision?” he asked quietly, damping down the tone of challenge that his words suggested.
Qontallium’s huge, ruby eyes blinked slowly in surprise. “Captain Riker is a very busy man.”
“Of course,” S’syrixx said. “I merely meant to ask why he sent you in particular, instead of, say, his . . . diplomatic officer.” He had very nearly said “mate” instead of “diplomatic officer,” since the pheromone emissions of both mammals had made the nature of their personal relationship abundantly clear; he’d decided to apply the latter term both out of simple prudence and because he didn’t enjoy thinking about the rutting habits of mammals.
“I don’t know,” Qontallium said with a birdlike bob of the shoulders. “I didn’t think to ask. Is it important?”
“It might be. But I believe I already know the answer. Rry’kurr placed me in your quarters—and therefore in your care—because he hopes I will form an interspecies bond with you that would be impossible for me to forge with him or with his m—”—S’syrixx paused to correct his near slipup—“his diplomatic officer.”
Qontallium’s shoulders bobbed again. “Sounds like a reasonable way to do the math. I’d probably do something similar if I were the captain.”
S’syrixx chuckled. “Even in this grand Federrazsh’n of yours, what chance does a reptiloid like you really stand of gaining command of a vessel like this one?”
The ruby eyes narrowed in evident annoyance. “That’s an excellent question, Mister S’syrixx. Maybe I’ll ask Captain Sigrengar of the Starship Galatea. I’ll be sure to bring it up the next time Titan rendezvouses with her ship, or when we’re having shore leave at the same time—on our mutual homeworld of Gnala.”
Whatever S’syrixx had planned to say next died forgotten before it got from his brain to his throat.
“Remember, Mister S’syrixx,” Qontallium said, the horn atop the creature’s head now standing taller and straighter than it had mere moments earlier. “The captain’s decision to grant you a safe haven aboard Titan is not unconditional. He might be inclined to reevaluate your present immigration status should you create any more difficulties for him—such as that unfortunate incident in shuttlebay one. Likewise, you’d be wise not to regard a positive recommendation from me as a foregone conclusion simply because of our superficial biological similarities. I offered to loan you my quarters—not to become your default best friend. Do we understand each other, Mister S’syrixx?”
S’syrixx nodded, chastened. “I understand.”
Could these Sst’rfleeters really be what they claimed to be? Were they truly concerned with the welfare of innocents like the Hranrarii? Were they actually as capable of delivering mercy and compassion to an adversary—one whose presence must have unnerved the mammals as much as the presence of so many mammals unnerved S’syrixx—as they were of dealing violence and cruelty? His own people’s notable deficiencies made it difficult to believe in such notions, even as remote possibilities.
But even so . . .
Lowering his claws, S’syrixx took a tentative step toward Qontallium, but stopped when he realized he was about to tread directly on the framed holoimage he had dropped.
“What is the status of the Hranrarii?” he asked as he crouched and retrieved the framed image. “I hope that Krassrr still has yet to repair the damage I did to the eco-sculptor.”
“The Hranrarii civilization remains intact,” Qontallium said. “But Captain Krassrr’s crews are continuing to work around the clock on the terraforming artifact—what your people call the ‘ecosculptor.’ Hranrar remains in grave danger. An incoming Typhon Pact military fleet is only a day away. Once they arrive at Hranrar, there won’t be much we can do to help the Hranrarii.”
“I see,” S’syrixx said. He digested the grim news, thankful at least that Krassrr had yet to extinguish the Hranrarii. Pensive, he stared at the holoimage he held in his manus, paying particular attention to the sword-wielding reptiloid who appeared to be fighting Qontallium. A question came to mind, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
“Who is Sar Antillea?”
The horn on Qontallium’s head seemed almost to droop. The creature’s ruby eyes quickly elided from pellucid anger to cloudy melancholy. “She is . . . she was. . . my mate.”
S’syrixx grunted his understanding. Unbidden, an image of his beloved, lost Z’shezhira sprang to mind.
Qontallium approached S’syrixx closely and slowly took the holoframe from the Gorn’s fingers. Moving with an almost ceremonial reverence, the security officer returned the object to its place of honor beneath the window.
“She was buried in space,” the security officer said, only now tipping S’syrixx off that he was probably a male of his species. “It was what she’d always said she wanted, in the event she were to lose her life in the line of duty. Tradition, you see, would demand a riparian burial back home on Gnala. But she had always said she’d prefer to spend eternity amid infinity. That’s probably why I like to keep her image here, right next to my own personal interface with that very same infinity.”
“She served here? Aboard Tie-tan?”
“Yes. In my own department, security. She was a senior chief petty officer. To avoid any potential conflicts of interest, we made sure that she didn’t have to answer directly to me. So she became part of Commander Keru’s handpicked elite combat squad.”
“She died defending Tie-tan?”
“During the Borg attack. Sar wasn’t the only member of Titan’s crew that the Borg killed. Security was probably hit the hardest. We also lost Rriarr. Doron. Tane. Hutchinson. Seven others.” The ruby eyes gazed past S’syrixx to the window, apparently fixed upon some extremely distant object.
S’syrixx felt a surge of sympathetic grief for Qontallium. He also experienced a flash of envy of Qontallium’s definitive knowledge of his mate’s demise; despite the grimness and finality of the fact, the security officer had at least obtained the kind of closure that S’syrixx was all but certain would forever elude him.
“The machine-mammals,” he said. “I grieve with you.”
Qontallium bowed his great horned head. “I thank you.”
Something occurred to S’syrixx then: Whether these Federrazsh’n citizens were being sincere or cynical in their idealism, he wanted to believe as they apparently did. If his asylum petition was ever to be anything other than a last-ditch act of desperation, he had to believe—he had to back his request up with a statement of faith.
He sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “Would you convey a message to Rry’kurr for me?”
GOR
N HEGEMONY RECONNAISSANCE VESSEL SSEVARRH
As Krassrr emerged from his planning chamber, he nearly collided with a small, slight form. He growled and cocked a rigidly muscular arm, preparing to bat the quivering youngling out of his way. But he stayed his manus when he noticed that the obstacle was the same young tech-caster who had approached him a short time ago with an overblown concern about some Hranrarii atmospheric phenomenon or other.
“What?” Krassrr roared, giving the youngling the benefit of the doubt.
“The ionization pattern I saw before has repeated itself, Captain,” the tech-caster said.
“So what?”
“By itself, that may not be significant. This time, however, a subspace pulse accompanied the phenomenon. Or to be more precise, the pulse appeared moments after the ionization trail dissipated.”
Now he calls it a trail, Krassrr thought. And a trail implies a willful entity capable of leaving it—and with the capacity to transmit subspace signals. His neck and crest scales rose into aggressive postures as he considered the possibility that the Federrazsh’n commander, Rry’kurr, may have yet again fooled him into believing he had withdrawn from the Hranrar system—only to sneak up on his flank like the furtive, scavenging mammalian vermin that he was.
But something about that scenario didn’t quite sit right with Krassrr. “Why would the Sst’rfleet crew be so careless as to allow a subspace signal to be intercepted?”
“Perhaps they were insufficiently aware of the reflective properties of Hranrar’s natural satellites.”
Krassrr grunted. It was a stroke of luck he could hardly credit. Still, he wasn’t about to look such unwonted good fortune in the maw. “Open a channel to the Zzrorss,” he said to the tech-caster. “Tell the comm officer there I have a new errand for his commander.”
• • •
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire Page 20
