by David Mack
What could it be? Were father and son, governor and emperor, conspiring to visit Vulcan’s long-simmering revenge upon Earth and humanity?
A single idea leaped from the darkest abyss of Sarek’s mind into Amanda’s thoughts. The notion itself was enough to terrify her, but the perfect certainty of Sarek’s belief in it shook Amanda to her bones: We will end the Empire.
Madness! Amanda recoiled from Sarek and stumbled as she got out of bed.
It was so horrific as to be incomprehensible. Spock and Sarek were planning to destroy the Empire itself. She asked herself over and over, Why? No answers came. Only more confusion, more fear … and then came the fury of betrayal.
She backed away from her sleeping husband.
I’m a loyal citizen of the Empire, she reminded herself. I won’t let traitors tear down all that my people have built. She resolved to act.
I need an ally strong enough to stop them, she reasoned, slipping out of the bedroom. Someone who’ll gain from seeing them fall.
At once the answer came to her … and she smiled.
After listening to Amanda’s tense account of a brewing conspiracy between Spock and Sarek, it was difficult for Marlena to feign disbelief; she had long known Spock and his father were in league to initiate sweeping political reforms. One look at her mother-in-law’s face on the comm screen, however, told Marlena the less she shared with Amanda the better.
“How did you come by this information?” Marlena asked.
“That’s not important,” Amanda said.
Marlena sharpened her stare and her voice. “I think it is.”
“You’re married to a Vulcan, as I am,” Amanda said. “You know better than to ask a question whose answer cannot be spoken.”
Her implication was clear to Marlena: the telepathic connection of the marriage bond had made Amanda privy to Sarek’s hidden agenda. Nodding in comprehension, Marlena said, “I understand.”
“We need to move quickly,” Amanda said, the cold fire of her anger palpable to Marlena even through the filter of a subspace channel. “We can’t sit back and let those green-blooded traitors deliver the Empire into bondage.”
Playing the part of the naïf, Marlena asked, “What would you have me do, Amanda? Most of Starfleet is loyal to Spock, and none of the planetary governors are willing to challenge him politically.”
“That’s because they’re not in a position to stop him,” Amanda said with a malevolent gleam in her eye. “But you are.”
“Excuse me?”
“Listen to me,” Amanda said, adopting a conspiratorial air. “I have powerful friends on Earth and Andor. Loyal friends.” Flashing a thin smile, she added, “They could be your friends, as well.”
“Meaning?”
“If you eliminate Spock, you could rule in his place—an Empress Regnant instead of a mere Empress Consort—and the Empire would once again kneel before a human monarch, as it should.”
Marlena loved Spock and believed in his vision of the future, but the siren song of absolute power called to her. Empress Marlena—a mistress with no master, she thought, blushing with pride.
“We should talk in person,” Marlena said. “When can you visit Earth?”
“In a week’s time.”
“Can I meet with one of your Andorian friends?”
Amanda made a small nod and smiled. “That can be arranged.”
“I look forward to your visit.”
“As do I … Majesty.”
“Most troubling,” Spock said.
The recording of Marlena’s conversation with Amanda left little room for Spock to doubt the gravity of the situation. It called for swift action.
He had hoped Sarek would be able to maintain enough control over his link with Amanda to avoid revealing too much of the plan to her. Unfortunately, his father’s physician had found early warning signs of Bendii Syndrome in Sarek’s brain chemistry shortly after his last Pon farr. Though the damage to Sarek’s cerebral tissue was still too slight to pose any risk of him projecting his hidden emotions onto others, it apparently had made it much more difficult for Sarek to conceal anything from Amanda within their marriage bond.
Spock had been sworn to secrecy by his father; he had not discussed Sarek’s infirmity with anyone—not even Marlena—and saw no reason to break his pledge now. The cause of this lapse in secrecy was no longer an issue; only its effect was.
Sequestered with Spock in the privacy of their bedroom, Marlena sat on the bed and watched him stare out the window at the gardens behind the imperial palace. She had been somber ever since bringing him a data card containing the recorded conversation. In a small voice, she asked, “What do we do now?”
“That is a difficult question to answer,” Spock said. “The threat my mother poses cannot be ignored. Her family is wealthy and connected to many of the Empire’s most powerful individuals, families, and corporations.”
Marlena got up from the bed and padded in cautious steps toward Spock. “Can’t she be persuaded to use those connections to help you?”
Shaking his head, Spock replied, “Doubtful. She is and always has been a loyal citizen of the Empire. I do not think she will act against it—not even for her husband or her son.”
“If that’s true, she could ruin everything,” Marlena said.
“Agreed.” Spock kept his voice level and his chin up even as he struggled to contain a crushing flood of despair.
Emotion is a cue, but it does not serve me, he admonished himself. I must control it as I must control my destiny. Logic alone must dictate my response.
He repeated his mantra, but his emotions refused to be yoked.
Marlena wrapped her hands around his left arm and nestled her head against his shoulder. Her presence was quiet but strong, concerned but not afraid. Spock found the balance in her countenance reassuring.
“My logic is clouded,” he confessed. “I ask your advice. What action should I take?”
She looked up at him with clear and determined eyes. “If Amanda can’t be swayed to our way of thinking, then you must do what is in the best interest of the people of the Empire. The good of the many—”
“Outweighs the needs of the few.”
“Or the one,” Marlena said.
Spock nodded with grim acceptance. “I will do what must be done.”
Sarek turned off the comm unit on his living room wall and stood in silence.
The voice of his aide, Lokor, echoed in his thoughts, but the words still did not feel real; the message they conveyed was too terrible for him to accept.
“The shuttle exploded en route to Earth,” Lokor had said. “Preliminary sensor sweeps indicate it was an accidental warp-core breach. The crew likely had no warning and no time to attempt a correction or evacuation.” Almost as an afterthought, the young man had added, “There were no survivors, Governor.”
Long rays of fading crimson slashed through the blinds shielding the windows. Outside, another day was dying, the sun a lonely ember sinking into a spreading sea of black.
Inside the home of Sarek, silence reigned.
He wandered, mute and alone, through empty rooms. Though he plodded in graceless steps, he felt weightless and insubstantial. No thoughts formed in his mind. Introspection revealed nothing but a gray void.
The chambers of his dwelling felt unfamiliar. It was as if he had never lived there, never owned any of those possessions, never known the place at all.
Drifting back into the main room, he was drawn to the wide, westward-facing window. He opened its blinds and stared out, past the towers and stalagmite-inspired cliff dwellings of ShiKahr, toward the ragged line of mountaintops on the horizon. Vulcan’s primary star, Nevasa, vanished behind them. A ruby-hued flare pulsed low in the sky … and then it faded away, vanished into darkness.
Sarek spun away from the window and flew into a rage, hurling antique vases against the walls, smashing priceless statues on the hard stone floor, battering the comm panel’s screen with his ba
re fists. With strength fueled by grief and madness, he lifted a stone coffee table and launched it at the picture window. The table shattered but barely blemished the window, which was made of transparent aluminum. Chunks of rock scattered around Sarek’s feet.
He fell to his hands and knees, gasping for breath and fighting to hold back hot tears of bitter sorrow.
My wife … my love … my Amanda … you’re gone.
2282
31
Caveat Vendor
“Sit down,” Kor said to Lorp, a fat Ferengi black marketeer. “You’re late.”
The corpulent businessman cast nervous looks at the heavily armed Klingon warriors flanking Kor, then he pulled back a chair and grunted with exertion as he awkwardly settled his bulk onto it. “Thank you, General,” he said.
Two more Ferengi stayed close behind Lorp, their hands resting on holstered plasma pistols while their eyes darted furtively back and forth at Kor’s men.
Kor scowled at his guests. The Ferengi were a repulsive race, in his opinion. Their noses looked ready-made for rooting in filth, and their oversized ears and propensity for flinching made him think of easily spooked rodents.
“You promised me information,” Kor said.
Lorp flashed a grin of fearsome, jagged teeth—his species’ only handsome feature, in Kor’s opinion. “Well, yes, I did, but I didn’t come all the way to Cestus III to give it to you as a gift. First I believe you have something for me, hm?”
“I did not forget.” Kor nodded at the warrior on his right side, who picked up a metallic case from the floor and laid it flat on the table between Kor and Lorp. Leaning forward, Kor opened the case and pushed it across the table to Lorp.
The Ferengi’s beady eyes opened wide with avarice as he looked upon his payment: a complete set of holographic schematics for a cloaking device. “Yes,” Lorp said, the word broadening his enormous snaggle-toothed grin. “This will fetch a very handsome price in certain sectors. Very handsome, indeed.”
Reaching out, Kor pushed the case’s lid shut. “Information. Now.”
Lorp’s grin became a grimace. He snapped his fingers and held up one hand. One of his men reached inside his jacket.
Both of Kor’s men had their disruptors drawn and aimed before the Ferengi retainer could remove his hand from inside his coat. He froze in place.
“Gejh, K’mdek—stand down,” Kor said. His men holstered their weapons. He nodded at the Ferengi retainer. “Proceed.”
Moving with slowness born of caution, the Ferengi aide removed a pale blue data rod from his jacket pocket and handed it to Lorp, who passed it to Kor.
“As promised, General,” Lorp said.
Kor reached inside his tunic and retrieved a device for reading optolythic data rods—a Cardassian technology that was prized because data could be written to such rods only once and thereafter could not be altered. The Cardassian government produced the rods only as it needed them, and they were very difficult to counterfeit. Consequently, they had become a favored means of encoding data that needed to be couriered by unreliable third parties—such as the Ferengi.
Even as Kor skimmed through the rod’s contents, Lorp seemed intent on narrating it for him from memory.
“Lots of contraband and strange materials moving around,” Lorp said. “High-tech computer parts, construction materials, exotic elements. Starfleet’s making deals, buying stuff from smugglers it could get for nothing at home.”
“I see that,” Kor said. He had suspected something odd was transpiring in the space beyond the Taurus Reach, but he had not expected to uncover a conspiracy as far-reaching as this seemed to be. Starfleet was supporting some kind of secret operation, using Orions and Ferengi as cutouts to hide its activities from its own chain of command. “Where is Starfleet taking these things?”
“An abandoned space station,” Lorp said, “orbiting a planetoid on the edge of the Mutara Nebula.”
Kor nodded. “Yes, the old Regula I station. I know it.”
“Lots of money involved in this deal,” Lorp said. “Big profits. Whoever’s behind this is well capitalized.”
“Indeed,” Kor said. He removed the data rod from its reader and tucked both into pockets inside his tunic. He flashed a disingenuous smile at Lorp. “Thank you for being so thorough in your research.”
Grinning, Lorp replied, “You’re quite wel—” He froze in mid-sentence as Kor’s men drew their disruptors and fired.
The barrage was deafening, but only for a moment.
Lorp’s henchmen were slain first. They fell in smoking heaps with their plasma pistols only half drawn from their holsters.
Then both of Kor’s warriors shot at Lorp. His charred bulk was knocked backward. He and his chair struck the ground with a loud slap.
The screeching of disruptors ceased, and once again the backwater dive bar fell silent. That was the Gorn’s one trait Kor appreciated: as long as the shooting didn’t cause any property damage or hurt any of their people, they didn’t give a damn what aliens did to each other.
He pushed back his chair, stood, and picked up the case from the table. Stepping over the smoldering corpses of the Ferengi, he said to his men, “Now there are three fewer people in the galaxy who know what we know; there is no chance of the Ferengi reselling it to anyone else; and the secrets of the Empire remain safe.” Leading his men out of the bar, he added with a fierce grin, “This, my friends, is what is known as a win-win situation.”
2283
32
A Serviceable Villain
Six months after the surgery, Lurqal still found herself surprised by her reflection.
Catching sight of her image in the mirror of her quarters’ bedroom, the cruel irony of her circumstances almost made her laugh.
It had been nearly six years since her narrow escape from the Starfleet starbase known as Vanguard. She and Turag, a representative from Imperial Intelligence, had been sent there to strike a deal with Commodore Reyes, who had captured a member of a precursor race known as the Shedai and transformed its immense power into a weapon that could shatter worlds.
The terms of an agreement between Reyes and the Klingon Empire were still being negotiated when Vanguard was attacked by one of the starships under its authority, its secret weapon was sabotaged from within, and the Shedai trapped in its core was unleashed to gut the station like a bonefish. Finally, a Tholian warfleet launched a surprise attack that reduced Vanguard and its yoked Shedai to ionized gas and radiation.
Turag, Reyes, and just about every other living thing on Vanguard perished that day, but Lurqal—burned, broken, and bloody—refused to die.
As the station imploded, she stole a warp-capable shuttlecraft and escaped moments before Starbase 47 was consumed in the Tholians’ brutal assault.
Lurqal returned to Qo’noS, but the limitations of Klingon medical science left her body deformed and her face disfigured. Unable to die with honor, she resigned herself to living in exile as a freak and outcast, an object of derision for the young, healthy, and beautiful.
Years passed.
Then, nine months ago, an agent of Imperial Intelligence sought out Lurqal and offered her an assignment—as a spy to be sent in human guise to infiltrate a secret Terran Empire research laboratory led by Dr. Carol Marcus, the scientist who had created the fearsome technology on Vanguard.
Eager for a chance to return to duty, Lurqal accepted the mission.
The same military surgeons whose lack of regard for the Empire’s wounded warriors had left her shattered and ruined as a Klingon transformed her in three months into the very image of human feminine beauty. Symmetrical and elegantly curved, tall and delicately featured, Lurqal gazed in shock at her new form.
Under the skin she remained Klingon, but a slew of subtle implants would fool the majority of sensors and medical scanners she was likely to encounter while living in Terran space. Hidden in her personal effects were several containers of tuQloS pills, which would enable her to draw nourish
ment from cooked food.
She stroked a lock of her long, auburn hair from her face and tucked it behind one ear. Staring at her reflection, she mused, I don’t know who you are.
Her door signal buzzed. Straightening her posture, she said, “Come.”
The door slid open, revealing the smiling face of Carol Marcus. “Doctor Sandesjo,” she said, stepping into the doorway. “Welcome aboard.”
“Please,” Lurqal said, mustering a disarming smile, “call me Anna.”
