“Then,” said Paris, “my grandfather became an admiral himself. His plaque at Starfleet Headquarters says he earned a reputation for wisdom and courage unmatched by any of his peers.”
Wu had never seen it. But then, there were lots of plaques at headquarters, lots of officers who had been honored.
“Next came my father, Iron Mike Paris. He was decorated no less than seven times as second officer and then executive officer of the Agamemnon.” The ensign’s voice dropped. “Unfortunately, his career was cut short when his ship was obliterated by the Romulans in what’s become known as the Tomed Incident.”
The run-in with the Romulans that precipitated fifty years of Romulan isolationism. Wu knew it as well as anyone.
“I never knew my father,” Paris told her. “I was just an infant when he died. All I had were holograms and my mother’s stories, all of which made him seem bigger than life.”
“I’m sorry,” said Wu.
The ensign acknowledged her sympathy with a nod. But there was more, apparently.
“Then there’s my Aunt Patricia, who’s five years younger than my father. She was on the Maryland at the Battle of Ankaata, where she lost an arm saving two of her fellow officers. She retired about the time I entered the Academy.”
The commander grunted. “Quite a pedigree.”
“Yes,” the ensign confirmed sardonically. “A lot to live up to. But my brother Owen never seemed to have any trouble with it. He’s always been the brainy type, you know? The type who’s going places? People say he’ll be the best Paris of all.”
Wu was familiar with Owen Paris. Who wasn’t?
In the eleven years he had spent wearing Starfleet crimson, the man had risen through the ranks like a shooting star. He had impressed commanding officers from one end of Federation space to the other.
And though he had been named first officer on one of the most prestigious vessels in the fleet, it seemed unlikely that Owen Paris would stop there. The smart money said he would make captain before the year was out.
“But I’m not my brother,” Ensign Paris insisted, as if someone had argued to the contrary. “I never have been and I never will be. I’m just an average guy.”
He looked Wu in the eye. “If it had been up to me, I would never even have applied to the Academy. But when you’re a Paris, Starfleet isn’t something you think about. It’s your fate, your destiny, your birthright. You don’t question it, you just go. And later on, when you have sons and daughters, they will go as well.”
The second officer’s heart went out to him. Her parents had both been colony administrators, but they had never tried to sway her choice of career. It was Wu herself who had opted to join Starfleet.
“I don’t belong here,” Paris told her. “I’m not captain material. I’m not even fit to be an ensign.”
Wu didn’t believe that. She said so. “You like piloting starships. And you’re good at it, Ensign. You’re damned good.”
Paris shrugged. “I’ve got an aptitude for it—people have told me that. But how can I man a helm when my hands shake at the slightest hint of pressure?” He shook his head, looking lost and dejected. “The kind of nerves I’ve got . . . they’re better suited to civilian work, and a laid-back kind of civilian work at that.”
Wu sighed. “So what you’re saying is you don’t want to pilot that shuttle for me.”
The ensign looked up at her, his eyes full of torment and frustration. “I want to, Commander. I want to help in the worst way. But do you want to trust me with people’s lives after what I’ve told you?” He held up his hands, which were trembling a little even now. “Do you want to take that kind of a chance?”
It was a good question.
Did Wu want to wager the lives of Jiterica and maybe a ship full of researchers that Paris would come through for her? Was that the best she could do for them?
The ensign would have to keep the shuttle and its tractor beam steady if Jiterica and the crew of the Belladonna were to have a shot at coming out of this alive. But if he gave in to the pressure, if his hands betrayed him as they had in the past . . .
Once, the ensign had seemed like the obvious choice for the job, the most talented helmsman this side of Idun Asmund. But now, knowing what he had told her about his problem, Wu had a problem on her hands.
And it was hers, no one else’s.
Picard was on Gnala. Ben Zoma as well. There was no sense in asking herself what they would have done in this instance because she didn’t know them well enough to say.
But she knew Captain Rudolfini well enough. Put in Wu’s place, forced to make this kind of choice, he hadn’t always relied on his head. More often than not, he had relied on his heart.
And not just his heart, but the hearts of others.
With that in mind, Wu looked across the table at Cole Paris. Clearly, the young man was scared stiff of bringing disgrace to his family’s name, and even more scared of being responsible for Jiterica. He didn’t want to let anyone down.
But Wu had seen him working at the Stargazer’s helm console. He wasn’t just good. He was a rare talent, a prodigy. At his best, Paris was still the number one choice for what she had in mind. In her heart, the commander was sure of it.
She just had to make sure she could get his best out of him.
“I’ve sat here and listened patiently to what you had to say,” Wu told the ensign. “Now you listen to me. Your grandfather, your father, your aunt... you may see them as superhuman figures, as gods. But they were people like you and me. And people get scared. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t, myself included.
“Ever been in combat?” she asked him.
Paris shook his head. “No.”
“You can’t imagine how you’ll ever get through it. Your knees tremble and your belly clenches like a fist and your heart pounds so hard you think it’s going to shatter against your ribs. And it’s even worse when other people’s lives depend on what you do and say. Then you feel their weight on you, a mountain of it, and you hate to make a move because you’re sure it’ll be the wrong one.
“But you make it, Ensign. Somehow you make it and you get through to the other side.”
Paris looked at her. “But—”
“Your hands shake?” she said, refusing to let him finish, refusing to let him slide back into his morass of self-doubt. “Maybe mine are shaking right now. Maybe I’m wondering if there’s a better way to save those scientists—or a way that doesn’t involve putting my own people’s lives at risk.
“Maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe I’ll disgrace myself and my family and have all those deaths on my head, and be haunted by my choice for the rest of my life. But that’s the chance I’ve got to take.”
Wu leaned forward in her chair. “I picked you for this job because I thought you were the best, Ensign. I still think it—and not because you’re a Paris. Frankly, that couldn’t matter less to me. The reason I think you’re the best is because you are—and I’d be a whopping great fool to send anyone else out on such an important mission.”
Paris didn’t seem inclined to protest what she was saying any longer. He just sat there, his mouth hanging open.
“Any questions?” the commander asked him.
The ensign didn’t say anything. He just shook his head from side to side.
“Then report to the shuttlebay.”
Paris nodded, looking as if he had just been slapped across the face. Then he got up and made his way out of the captain’s ready room. As the doors opened, he looked back at her for a moment.
“I’ll try not to let you down,” he said.
And with that, he went through the open doorway.
Wu slumped back in the captain’s chair. Apparently, her words had had the desired effect. Paris would do what she had asked of him.
She could only hope it would be enough.
It was late in the day when Simenon and his companions came to the obstacle he had been dreading the most—a convex wall of coarse, d
ark rock that rose eighty meters straight into the air and stretched to the horizon on either side.
“Well,” Ben Zoma told Simenon as he took the measure of the wall, “you weren’t kidding. That is a healthy climb.”
Picard glanced at the engineer. “Especially when the climber is hampered by injuries.”
Simenon imagined that his rivals were climbing the barrier now or had already gotten past it. However, he didn’t know for sure because he couldn’t see them. Their paths had diverged more and more as time went on, and the corrugated shape of the wall served to conceal the portions of it Kasaelek and Banyohla would be required to climb.
“Fortunately,” Picard added knowingly, “your forebears didn’t scale this wall. They found an alternative.”
Simenon nodded. “Yes.” But under the circumstances, he wasn’t sure that it was all that fortunate.
The Aklaash and the Fejjimaera were superior to the Mazzereht when it came to climbing, just as they were superior in so many other aspects of the ritual. However, Simenon’s subspecies could do one thing better than the other subspecies.
They could hold their breath.
And at some point in the history of the ritual, one of Simenon’s predecessors had discovered a series of caves that ran beneath the rock wall—a feature still almost completely flooded with water from an underground river.
The engineer had intended all along to swim that river and come up on the other side of the rock wall—a shortcut that had represented an advantage to his ancestors and seemed certain to give him an edge over Kasaelek and Banyohla.
But with his arm hanging limply and painfully at his side, he wouldn’t be able to swim the caves. He would instead have to depend on a plan Vigo had come up with a half hour earlier.
The Pandrilite had already found one of the extraordinarily long, flexible vines that grew in such profusion in these woods. Snapping the vine off at the root with his great strength, he tied one end around his waist and made a knot to hold it in place—leaving the last ten meters’ worth trailing on the ground.
Tugging on the knot, Vigo made sure it was secure. Then he snapped off another length of vine and added it to the first. And then a third, even longer than the first two.
Finally, the weapons officer turned to Simenon. “Do you think you can hang onto this?”
“I’ll have to,” said the Gnalish, “won’t I?”
The plan was for Vigo to swim through the caves, trailing his chain of vines behind him. When he reached the place where the caves opened up on the opposite side of the rock wall, Simenon would grab the end of Vigo’s lifeline and allow Vigo to pull him through. Then the others would follow on their own, one at a time.
“That soreness in your side may make it difficult to hold your breath,” Greyhorse pointed out.
“But I won’t be exerting myself,” Simenon told him. “All I’ve got to do is hang on and fend off the occasional obstruction.”
And with that, he led the way to the cave mouth.
Chapter Twenty
WU ARRIVED IN THE SHUTTLEBAY just as Jiterica was entering the specially rigged shuttle. Paris, it seemed, was already inside the craft. The commander turned to Chiang. “Everything checks out,” he said before she could ask.
She nodded. “Good.”
Then she approached the shuttle and watched Jiterica take her place inside it. Ironically, the Nizhrak seemed to have less trouble negotiating the cramped quarters of the auxiliary craft than she’d had taking a seat in the mess hall.
Paris was running a last-minute instrument diagnostic. When he noticed Wu standing at the hatch, he acknowledged her with a nod.
“Commander,” he said.
He seemed to have regained his confidence. The second officer certainly hoped that that was the case. There was a lot riding on Paris and his abilities.
“Ensign,” she said by way of a reply. Then, after she was certain that Jiterica had taken notice of her as well, she said, “Do either of you have any questions?”
Neither of them seemed to have any. But then, their assignment was a simple one in concept. It was only in its execution that complications seemed likely to set in.
“Then good luck to you,” said Wu.
“Thank you, Commander,” Paris replied.
“Thank you,” Jiterica echoed in her tinny, unnatural-sounding helmet-audio voice.
Then the hatch closed and Wu stood back from the shuttlecraft. She watched as it lifted off the deck and headed for the permeable force field that separated the bay from the airless void.
The shuttle seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second as it neared the force field. Then it sailed through it with a gentle flash, wheeled to starboard, and was lost to sight.
And Wu, who wished she could have accompanied the ensigns in their shuttlecraft, instead returned to the bridge to direct the rescue effort from the captain’s chair.
Ben Zoma considered the triangular cave mouth in front of him, which was little more than a meter high but as many as three meters wide. It was dark inside the opening, but not too dark to catch a glimpse of the water through which they would all soon be swimming.
Joseph turned to Simenon. “How far did you say it would be?”
The Gnalish shrugged. “Not that far. Thirty meters or so. But there’s no light and it’s not quite a straight path. That’s why you’ve got to hug one of the walls as you go forward.”
Ben Zoma filed the information away for when his turn came. But that wouldn’t be for a while. Vigo would be the first one in the water, followed by Simenon.
Vigo smiled at the Gnalish, no doubt hoping to inspire confidence in his abilities. “I’m ready to try it if you are,” he said.
Simenon frowned as he studied the cave mouth. “All right,” he said after a moment. “But now that I think about it, I want someone to tie the end of the vine around my waist. That way I don’t have to worry about losing my grip.”
“But,” Greyhorse protested, “if you get stuck, you won’t be able to free yourself. You’ll be lost down there.”
Simenon looked grim as he glanced at the doctor. “That’s a chance I’ll have to take.”
No one else argued with him. It was, after all, his life at stake. He had a right to do what he thought best.
“Here goes,” said Vigo.
He checked the vine wrapped around his middle and pulled the knot that held it a little tighter. Then he hunkered down, made his way into the cave, and took a series of deep breaths. After the last and deepest, he submerged himself and was gone.
The water gurgled and churned as the length of vine broke the surface in the Pandrilite’s wake. Like the others, Ben Zoma watched it disappear, meter by meter.
As long as it kept moving it signified that Vigo was moving as well. The last thing any of them wanted to see was slack in the line. And they didn’t see anything of the sort—not until half of the last vine had been claimed by the passageway.
Then the safety line stopped flowing into the water. Ben Zoma glanced at his friend Picard. If they were lucky, Vigo had reached the other side. If not . . .
Suddenly, they heard a shout—a booming cry that could only have come from the powerful throat of a Pandrilite, audible despite the soaring wall of rock that stood between them. The first officer breathed a sigh of relief.
Vigo had made it. It was time for step two.
In recognition of the fact, Simenon came forward and wrapped the end of the vine around his waist. Then Picard and Joseph tied a knot in it and pronounced it secure.
The prearranged signal of the Gnalish’s readiness was a series of three tugs on the end of the vine. Ben Zoma did the honors. A moment later, he saw the line rise off the ground and go taut.
And a moment after that, it tugged Simenon in the direction of the cave mouth. The engineer looked at each of them in turn, his expression uncomfortably like that of a man condemned to death.
“My turn,” he said grimly.
Then, pulled by Vigo,
he vanished into the water and left a swirl of current in his wake.
“Leave it to Simenon to get a free ride,” said Ben Zoma, hoping to break the tension.
But no one laughed. They would only do that, he suspected, after they knew their colleague had reached the other side.
They waited for a few seconds, then a few more. If all went well, it wouldn’t be long before they heard from Vigo.
But after what seemed like enough time, the signal still hadn’t come. Ben Zoma and the others looked at each other.
“He’s been down there too long,” said Greyhorse.
The doctor was right. “Someone’s got to go after him,” the first officer said.
And without another thought, he scrambled through the cave mouth and hit the water.
It was cold, shockingly so. But then, its source was probably some mountain lake only half-redeemed from the grasp of winter. Ignoring the temperature, Ben Zoma propelled himself through the gloom with his legs, using his hands to feel his way along the wall beside him.
He couldn’t see Simenon, but he could hear some kind of bubbling up ahead. It got louder and more insistent as he swam forward, telling Ben Zoma that he wasn’t too late.
Simenon was alive. At least, for the moment.
But something had stopped him from getting through the cave chain. And in the now-perfect darkness that surrounded him, Ben Zoma couldn’t tell what it was.
There was only one thing he could do—get hold of Simenon and feel around until he found the problem.
With that in mind, he scissored forward until his hand brushed against one of the Gnalish’s frantically churning legs. Grasping it, he felt the kicking stop—a sign that his comrade was either acknowledging his presence or had run out of air.
Hoping it was the former, Ben Zoma used Simenon like a ladder and pulled himself up to what he imagined was the Gnalish’s face. Then he found Simenon’s shoulder and upper arm and felt for the tautness that would suggest his friend’s hand was stuck.
As it turned out, it wasn’t. In fact, it seized the first officer’s wrist and directed it to where Ben Zoma had come from—toward Simenon’s feet.
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