by David Stern
“Well … he was sick, for one thing.”
“In what way?”
“I didn’t have much of a chance to look over the diagnostic sensors. Can’t be sure.” He’d had very little time at all, in fact. He didn’t want to risk someone coming in on him in a place he wasn’t supposed to be. The Klingon had a fever; Boyce assumed that was why he was crying out, and the doctor gave him a fever reducer. It seemed to have done the trick; the Klingon’s cries, as far as Boyce could tell, had stopped.
“The real question is where he came from,” the doctor added.
“A prisoner of war, perhaps,” Hoto suggested.
“Maybe. Though he seemed a little old to be …” Boyce’s voice trailed off.
“Sir? Is something the matter?”
“Kronos,” he said, and explained what he’d found out about the data node on the LeKarz.
“You think the two are connected?”
“It would be an awfully big coincidence if they weren’t.”
“What would a Klingon be doing on Starbase Eighteen?”
“I don’t know.” Jaya certainly hadn’t said anything about it. In any case, Boyce couldn’t see how it was relevant at the moment. “Were you able to find anything out about our position in space, where exactly we are?”
Hoto nodded. “Yes. We are within striking range of Federation territory, a day’s travel at warp two.”
“Does that mean we can reach someone with a message?”
Hoto frowned. “Yes. It does mean that. However, the ship’s communications system has proven more difficult to access than I had expected.”
“So we won’t be able to get off a message to Starfleet?”
“No. I have, however, conceived an alternative plan.”
“I’m listening.”
“This is an old ship.”
“Yes. I noticed.”
“Many technical modifications have been made to it.”
“I noticed that, too.”
“Of course. The point is, the ship’s electrical system routinely operates beyond nominal capacity. The conduits are stressed. I believe I can cause a phase cascade reaction, which will overload them quite easily.”
“A phase cascade reaction?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that?”
“An escalating series of disruptions to the ship’s power supply.”
“You’re going to cut the power.”
“More than that.” Hoto smiled. “Destroy the ship.”
“What?”
“Destroy the ship,” she said.
“And what’s the point in that?” Boyce asked.
“The destruction would occur in stages. I could set different points of overload to provide cover for our escape. There are shuttles aboard this vessel. We could reach one and—”
“If the ship’s blowing up, won’t everyone be trying to reach the shuttlecraft?”
Hoto frowned. “There is that to consider. The plan can be modified.”
“Wait a second. Yesterday you were telling me I had to help Liyan. Today you want me to kill her?”
“Her death is not the intent of the plan. Our escape is.”
“And if she dies, that’s all right?”
“The plan can be modified. Clearly, it would be better if she did not perish,” Hoto agreed.
“Wonderful,” Boyce said. “I’ll let her know.”
Hoto frowned. “Sarcasm is rarely productive, Doctor. Rest assured, the tallith’s survival remains important. However, sensor images I obtained the previous evening from the ship’s data banks lead me to believe that it is increasingly unlikely. Karkon’s Wing is being shadowed by several other vessels, most of which, in the estimation of the tallith’s key intelligence personnel, either belong to or are affiliated with the clan Singhino. Those same personnel conclude that the ships are likely planning an assault on this vessel.”
“That’s not good.”
“No, sir.”
“When do they think this assault is likely to happen?”
“Several days, in the opinion of most. Sooner, according to others.”
“And you? What do you think?”
“I have no context to place the data in,” Hoto said. “My opinion would be uninformed. And thus valueless.”
Boyce nodded. Fair enough, he was about to say, but Hoto wasn’t through talking.
“However, I have noted among most of those same intelligence experts that a preponderance of message packets have been sent to several currency traders within this sector.”
“They’re moving their money around.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hedging their bets.” Boyce was reminded of rats, deserting a sinking ship.
The clock was well and truly ticking then. For Liyan, the Codruta … and himself and Lieutenant Hoto to boot.
“We’d better get to work, then,” Boyce said, getting to his feet.
“Agreed. I will continue to search for ways to contact Starfleet. And explore alternatives to the ship’s destruction.”
Boyce nodded. “Good.”
And for his part … he would continue to play the game he was playing. Pretending to seek answers to the tallith’s seemingly insoluble dilemma. The thing was, Boyce realized as he pressed the comm button to summon the guard that would escort him to the lab, that game—the search for the truth about gamina and the mechanisms by which it worked—was, despite everything, beginning to take on a life of its own.
Put another way, he was curious. Anxious to get to work.
The doctor decided to shortcircuit those impulses the second he reached the lab in the converted shuttlebay. He donned his parka and some thermal gloves and returned to work at the LeKarz.
Rather than continue to study the gamina data, though, Boyce decided to start his day off by breaking through the protocols protecting the Kronos data node. He was no computer expert, but he’d spent enough time working with the machine and was familiar enough with the logic of its internal security systems—having set up such protocols himself back on Argelius—that he believed access to the Kronos data was within his reach. He had no idea what information that node might contain. In retrospect, he realized, Jaya had been unduly secretive about what was happening at Starbase 18, what she was actually doing there. Her field of expertise had been pathogens, nonspecies-specific pathogens. Which in layman’s terms meant she dealt with viruses capable of crossing the species barrier, diseases that had the potential to affect all manner of races alike. Possibly, the Klingon down the hall from Hoto been at Starbase 18, had been part of her experiments. He figured it wouldn’t take him long—an hour or two at most—to find out whether or not that was true.
It turned out, though, that he was wrong.
After a fruitless morning spent hacking away at the encrypted data, Boyce realized he was in above his head. He cleared the display, stood back from the machine a moment, and considered his next step.
Hoto was fairly deep into the Orion ship’s computer system; she ought to be able to access any communications related to the Klingon on the medical wing. He’d leave the Klingon to her as well. For the moment.
He left the LeKarz and returned to one of the Orion computer terminals, to his study of gamina and the efforts that had already been made at duplicating the serum. They were considerable. From the moment the serum, and its effects, had been discovered, Zandar and her predecessors had been hard at work trying to uncover its secrets. Their efforts had been inventive, exhaustive, and, ultimately, futile.
They had tried replicating gamina under differing gravitational and atmospheric conditions. They had tried substituting laboratory-produced analogues for naturally occurring substances, and vice versa. They had even tried—Boyce shuddered in revulsion—duplicating the serum in situ, within the bodies of what the experiment summaries referred to as “volunteers.” Two people, who’d died immediately and painfully during the replication process.
There had, in fact, been several oth
er “volunteers” involved, fourteen in all. Half of those, Boyce learned, had died from complications related to gamina, heart attacks in some, as a result of higher blood pressure, dementia in others, as a result of decreased blood flow to the brain. Poor circulation had resulted in gangrenous limbs; inadequate nutrition transport within the body had resulted in multiple organ failure. There were pictures—some of them as gruesome as any laboratory experiments Boyce had ever seen—accompanying the records.
The other half, as far as he could tell from the data, were still alive. Not unaffected by the laboratory-created gamina, what the files referred to as gamina-B. All suffered from blood-related diseases, certain factors that, after the serum’s introduction, remained too high, others that stayed too low and had to be artificially replicated.
He suddenly realized something.
Zandar was across the bay, with the same scientists she’d been working with the other day. Boyce caught her eye and motioned her over.
“Can I be of assistance?”
“Yes. Deleen. Her records aren’t in here.” He nodded to the screen.
“No.” Zandar nodded. “They are in the medical lab at the moment.”
“Can I see them?”
“Of course.”
Boyce stepped aside, and Zandar punched a series of commands into the terminal. The records filled the screen.
Boyce glanced at the top page and frowned. “These are the most recent tests?”
“Yes.”
“They’re five days old.”
“She is scheduled for follow-up shortly.”
Boyce nodded. “I’d like to test her now. If you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” Zandar said.
He found Deleen in the tallith’s quarters, which turned out to be an entire suite of rooms. She was in a darkened chamber toward the back of that suite, sitting in front of a long, low table a work surface. Scattered across the table were several small, diamond-shaped pieces of metal, maybe six inches a side. They looked, for some reason, familiar to him.
Deleen was holding another of those little pieces of metal in one hand. In the other, she held what looked to Boyce like a scanner of some sort, an electronic device that emitted a thin blue beam, which she was slowly running across the surface of the metal piece.
She looked up as Boyce and his escort entered.
“Doctor.” She nodded at the guard, who nodded back and left. “I’m surprised to see you.” She set the scanner and the fragment of metal down on the table; as she did so, the light caught the metal, reflecting off it like some kind of mirror.
It came to him then why the fragments looked so familiar.
“Those are from the ship,” he said. “The sentry’s vessel.”
“That’s correct.”
“What are you doing with them?”
“Trying to extract the data embedded within them. It’s not an easy process.”
“Data? I thought they were pieces of the ship’s hull.”
“They are. They served a dual purpose, apparently.”
“That’s a neat trick.”
“Indeed. The Orions of K’rgon’s time …” She shook her head. “There is so much they knew. So much they were capable of. So much that has been lost. Here.”
She handed him the little scanning device. The top screen was full of data that, for a second, looked like gibberish to him.
“Ah. My mistake. Allow me.”
She leaned closer and pressed a button on the side of the device. The data on the screen blurred, disappeared, then popped back into focus.
Now, however, it was in English.
“Thank you.”
Boyce scanned screen after screen of data, all different kinds: mathematical equations, molecular diagrams, historical summaries, paintings, literature, poetry …
“It’s a lot to take in,” he said.
“That’s because it’s not organized.” She set the device down on the table. “But the way it’s all stored, we can access the information, but we can’t quite figure out how it’s indexed. Every fragment has hundreds of bits of data like this. How it all ties together …” She shook her head.
“Why are you looking at all this?” Boyce asked. “I didn’t know you were a scientist.”
“I’m not. But the tallith’s scientists, they are involved in other things. She frowned. “As you should be. The tallith needs that serum, Doctor.”
“And I need a sample of your blood.”
“For what purpose?”
“To see the effect gamina-B is having on it.”
“Of course,” she said, and rolled up the sleeve of her garment.
He took a hypo from his medikit and extracted the necessary quantity of blood. She rolled her sleeve back up; he put the vial into his medikit and stood.
“I’ll get back to work now,” he said.
She nodded. “As will I. Trying to figure out the reason for the discontinuity in this storage system.”
Boyce looked down at her and smiled. In that instant, she had sounded like Hoto. The way she focused her attention on the little scanning device, in fact, even reminded him of Hoto. Biology as destiny? He was about to tell her that she should consider herself as proof of what nonsense that was when a chime sounded.
“Excuse me,” Deleen said, and rolled her chair across the little room to a comm screen set into the wall. She pressed a button next to that screen, and it came to life, filling with Liyan’s image. She looked angry.
“Daughter. Dr. Boyce is with you?”
“He is.”
Liyan nodded. “Bring him to the command center. Immediately.”
The screen went dark.
TWENTY-FIVE
The command center—what Boyce would have called the bridge on Enterprise —was positioned at the very top of the vessel.
The tallith rose from her chair as they entered. “You were not in the lab. Why?”
Boyce explained. Liyan seemed not at all mollified.
“Gamina-B’s effects do not concern me, Doctor. I want the serum duplicated. That is where you are to concentrate your efforts.” She glared at him. “Is that clear?”
Boyce glared right back.
“In the first place,” he said, “finding out why the gamina-B your scientists produced didn’t work is critical to avoid repeating their mistakes. In the second place, you can’t dictate how research—”
“Bring me Lieutenant Hoto,” Liyan snapped.
“Yes, Majesty.” One of the Orions seated nearby stood and walked toward the turbolift.
“What?” Boyce said.
“You must learn to listen, Doctor. Listen and obey.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“You shall see. When your lieutenant arrives here.”
Boyce looked into her eyes. What he saw there frightened him.
Something else he saw made an impression as well. The veins on her neck, standing out like cords against her skin.
“I was trying to obey,” he said. “Using my best judgment—”
“Your judgment does not matter!” she shouted.
Boyce—startled—took a step back.
“My judgment is supreme. I will utilize your knowledge, your expertise, as I see fit.” She took one step and then another toward him. “Do you understand?”
Boyce looked at Liyan and then quickly, over at her daughter. Deleen looked as shocked as he felt. Boyce saw in that split-second that her eyes, as she looked at her mother, were filled with something as well. Concern.
“Yes. I understand,” he said, trying to put all the fear he felt—much of it genuine; who knew what the tallith would do to Lieutenant Hoto; she seemed completely out of control—into his expression.
The tallith’s eyes remained fastened on Boyce a moment longer. Then she nodded. “My need for the serum is urgent. You will return to work at once. But first …” She sat down in her chair. “Before you return to the lab, I have another task for you.”
“An
other task.”
“You have seen Gurgis.”
The change of subject caught him by surprise. “Yes.”
“He appeared healthy to you.”
“Some burns. Some bruises. I didn’t really get—”
Deleen touched his arm. Boyce realized it was a signal.
“But yes,” he finished. “Overall, he seemed healthy to me.”
The tallith smiled. “Good. That is the information I wish you to convey.”
“To whom?”
“The Singhino. Their warlord, their commander, wishes to speak with Gurgis. They desire assurances that he is still alive. I have given those assurances, but they will not take my word. I believe, however, they will take yours. Specialist.” She gestured to one of her officers. “We are ready.”
The man she spoke to bowed and keyed in a series of instructions on his console.
There was a viewscreen at the front of the command center, similar to but smaller than the one aboard Enterprise. It filled, suddenly, with a burst of static.
The static cleared.
An Orion male—head shaved, wearing pirate leathers, looking to Boyce to be at least Gurgis’s size, if not larger (scale being hard to judge from only the head and shoulders the doctor could see)—glared down at them.
“You try my patience, Codruta. Where is he?”
“I am tallith,” Liyan said. “You will address me as such.”
“Tallith, then. Titles matter little to the Singhino. What matters is Gurgis. Where is he?”
“Indisposed, as I said.”
“And I said I wanted proof of this.”
“I bring you proof. A Federation doctor who has seen him.”
She gestured at Boyce to step forward.
“Who are you?” the Orion rumbled.
“Philip Boyce. Lieutenant commander, Starfleet.”
“You are the tallith’s new toy?”
“I’m nobody’s toy,” Boyce snapped—though, of course, here and now, that’s exactly what he was.
“Yet there you are on Karkon’s Wing. With the Codruta scum.” The Orion shook his head. “You have chosen your allies poorly, Doctor. Their days are numbered.”
“Your words mark you as a rebel. A traitor to the alliance your commander willingly made,” Liyan said. “Gurgis has not released you from those obligations.”
