The captain got up as well. “That’ll be all,” he confirmed.
“Good,” said Domic. “And you’ll be sure to let my government know how helpful I’ve been?”
Kirk considered the prisoner. “What did you do, anyway? How does an Iach’tu get thrown in prison for twenty years?”
Dornic shrugged. “I failed to remit the proper sum to the new government’s tax collectors—an oversight I have had time to deeply regret.”
The captain swore to himself. Then he joined Orisa at the door to the chamber and called for the guard.
Back on the Enterprise, Orisa went straight to her quarters and remained there. At McCoy’s suggestion, Kirk gave her some time to be by herself. Then he paid her a visit.
When the doors slid apart, he found Orisa sitting on a chair with her face in her hands. “What is it?” she asked, her voice a bit softer than he had heard it lately.
“I wanted to discuss our next move with you,” the captain said.
Orisa looked up at him. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? If there are three living informants, all we need to do is stake out their homes—and wait for the murderer to show up.”
But she didn’t look happy about the simplicity of their task. In fact, she looked miserable.
What’s more, Kirk knew why. If Dornic was telling the truth, the Draqqi they were going to protect were cowards and traitors … people who bought their conveniences with the lives of their fellow prisoners.
“Helping scum like Aavo … it seems like we’re fighting on the wrong side,” he observed.
Orisa sighed. “This Sanda was a friend to my people at Sadj Monh. A hero. And we’re going to arrest him.”
“For the sake of the peace talks,” the captain noted. “He’s still an Iach’tu, remember—and it’s still important that we keep this quiet.”
But that wasn’t his only reason. “Besides,” he said, “we can’t let him claim another life.”
“Even a life like Aavo’s?” she asked.
“Even that one,” Kirk asserted. “It’s not up to us to judge people, Orisa. It’s not up to us to decide who lives and who dies.”
“It isn’t justice,” she rasped, her eyes angry and red-rimmed.
“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But it’s our duty … not just as officers, but as people. There’s a killer out there—and he has to be stopped.”
Orisa didn’t say she agreed with the captain. However, she helped him map out what they had to do.
Before they were finished, Uhura contacted Kirk via ship’s intercom. “I have a message from the Draqqi government,” she said.
“Go ahead,” the captain told her.
“They say Heenin Vonakh is dead, sir.”
Kirk sighed. That left only two informants for them to protect.
Nes Aavo’s house was clearly the dwelling of a wealthy man.
It was a series of light blue arches with plenty of windows—especially on the side that faced the shifting green waters of Tuyatt Bay. On the other three sides, it was surrounded by tall, auburn-colored trees, which gave Aavo privacy without sacrificing esthetics.
Kirk, Orisa, and a handful of Draqqi security personnel hid themselves among the shrubs in the hills above Aavo’s estate, equipped with phasers and provisions. Then they began their vigil.
Aavo was the bait—and they were the trap. In order to keep the trap intact, they had refrained from telling the bait that they were there—or, for that matter, how they had come to the conclusion that he might be the murderer’s next target.
Of course, the killer might have opted to strike at Lurt Rebbis instead, but Rebbis’s house was being watched as well. Either way, Kirk and Orisa would have their man before long.
Not for the first time, the captain felt out of place. But he had taken an oath to serve the Federation, whether he was ensconced in the center seat of a starship or crouched behind a bush with a phaser in his hand … and serve he would.
Day eventually yielded to a splendid bloody dusk, and nothing happened. Then, as the stars were beginning to assert themselves in a darkening sky, Kirk saw an animal about the size of a squirrel dart away from Aavo’s house.
Animals didn’t move that way for no reason—he knew that from his boyhood in Iowa. Gesturing for Orisa to follow him, the captain hunkered down and made his way down the slope.
Halfway to the ring of trees, he heard the sound of something shattering. A window, he thought. Somehow, the murderer had gotten past them and made it to his destination.
Their fifty-fifty chance had paid off—but Aavo might not live to applaud their decision.
His heart pumping hard in his chest, Kirk slipped through the trees and saw a series of tiny, irregularly shaped pools glistening on the ground. It took him a moment to realize he was looking at shards of glass.
“That way,” he told Orisa, pointing with his phaser.
The window frame still contained splinters of glass, but the captain located a splinterless spot and vaulted through the opening. He found himself in a small, unoccupied room with another doorway at its far end.
Beyond the threshold, there were voices. One was harsh, the other scared. Kirk could hear the latter voice rising in pitch.
Before it could reach a crescendo, the captain darted into the next room. Orisa was right behind him, her phaser in hand.
However, they only saw one figure in the room—that of Aavo. He was standing near a second doorway, nearly as pale as Mani Begron had been.
Too late, Kirk realized where the murderer was.
“Drop your weapons,” said a voice from behind him.
The captain did as he was asked. Orisa hesitated, then did the same, her phaser clattering on the floor.
“Now turn around,” the voice instructed them.
Again, they complied—and saw someone standing beside the door. He was a tall, rangy figure with the green eyes and pale gold hair of a Draq … and he had a Klingon disruptor in his hand.
“Contact the others,” he snapped. “Tell them to stay where they are.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Kirk told him.
“Tell them,” the murderer insisted.
Orisa took out her communications set and ordered her men to keep their distance. Then she put the device away.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told the murderer. “You’re surrounded. You’ll never get out of here.”
The figure grunted. “Don’t you think I know that?”
The captain wanted to keep him talking, so he said the first thing that came to mind. “You’re the Iach’tu, aren’t you? The one who worked in the camp at Sadj Monh?”
The murderer nodded, his eyes flitting from Kirk and Orisa to his prey and back again. “I’m Sanda,” he confirmed.
“Why are you doing this?” Kirk asked. “To avenge yourself on the people who put you in prison?”
Sanda’s mouth twisted into a scowl. “When Aavo and the others exposed me, they didn’t just deprive me of my freedom—I could perhaps have forgiven them for that. They also deprived the other prisoners of the help I might have given them … and that, I can never forgive.”
“Everyone thought you were dead,” the captain told him. “When your transport was attacked….”
“The Draqqi underground knew who I was,” the Iach’tu replied. “But I couldn’t join them, for obvious reasons.”
“So what did you do?” Kirk asked. “Where did you go?”
“I worked on merchant ships for years and years,” Sanda told him.
“I bided my time, waiting until the time was right for me to pay back my enemies. Then the moment came … and I acted.”
He leveled his weapon at Aavo. Seeing it, the Draq screamed and tried to screw himself into the wall.
“No!” Orisa insisted, taking a half-step forward. “What’s past is past. You can’t change what happened.”
She sounded sincere. However, Kirk knew that she didn’t necessarily believe the sentiment herself.
&nb
sp; Sanda shook his head. “I’m not listening to you. For all I know, you were a sympathizer too.”
He turned his disruptor on Aavo again. Kirk was about to make a desperate play for the weapon when someone else walked into the room through the other doorway.
It was a Draqqi child—a boy no more than ten years old. He looked around with big blue eyes, wondering what he had stumbled into. Then, before anyone else could react, Aavo grabbed the child and hugged him to his chest.
“Please,” he told Sanda, “spare his life! He’s my only son!”
But it was clear to Kirk that Aavo wasn’t concerned about the boy. He was just using the child as a shield, knowing it was unlikely that Sanda would kill the son to get at the father.
The captain felt dirty just being in the same room with Aavo. Judging by Orisa’s expression, she had much the same reaction.
“Send the boy out of the room,” Sanda snarled.
Aavo didn’t do it. He just stood there, wide-eyed, clutching the child to him like life itself.
Sanda stared at the boy, the muscles working in his jaw. For a moment, Kirk thought the Iach’tu might shoot anyway. Then he splayed his fingers and let his disruptor fall to the floor.
“I wouldn’t want to hurt Estheen’s son,” Sanda said solemnly. “Nor will I hurt the man who somehow saved him from Sadj Monh … no matter what else he may have done in his lifetime.”
Both the captain and Orisa took the opportunity to kneel and recover their phasers. Then Orisa took out her comm set and called for her Draqqi to enter the house.
Seeing that he was safe, Aavo released the child. The boy’s expression turned curious … and he took a step toward Sanda.
“How did you know my mother?” he asked.
The Iach’tu could have told him. But then, that would have involved his letting the boy know what scum Aavo was, and that he wasn’t the child’s real father. So instead Sanda replied, “I was a guard in the camp where your mother was held prisoner.”
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Kirk saw Aavo go for Sanda’s weapon. He knew what the Draq was going to do with it, too—make sure that the Iach’tu didn’t reveal the skeleton in Aavo’s closet.
But the captain was faster than the informer. As Aavo picked up the disruptor, Kirk grabbed his wrist and took it from him.
Sanda didn’t comment on what Aavo had tried to do. He just looked at the boy and said, “Everyone loved your mother. You should know that. We just had different ways of showing it.”
The child studied him for a while. Then he nodded, as if he understood. And maybe he did, the captain reflected.
Just then, Orisa’s Draqqi entered the room, eyes alert, phasers at the ready. They relaxed a bit when they saw that the situation was under control.
“Come on,” Orisa told the Iach’tu, but not with great eagerness. “It’s time to go.”
Frowning, Sanda allowed the security personnel to escort him out of the room. Kirk watched him leave, then glanced at Orisa.
She looked drained. He didn’t blame her.
“You know,” the captain, “he’s going to need someone to speak on his behalf. Someone who knows what the camps were like.”
Orisa nodded. “I’ll do that. Gladly.” She looked back at him. “You were right, James. I didn’t want justice. I wanted revenge.”
“So did Sanda,” he noted. “But he found the same thing you did—that it was a bit more complicated than he had imagined.”
It always is, Kirk added inwardly. If he had doubted that even a little, the truth of it had been brought home to him with renewed fury.
“I need some air,” Orisa told him, just a hint of the woman she used to be shining in her dark, exotic eyes. “Would you care to join me?”
The captain smiled. “As long as there are no bridges around. I don’t much like bridges.”
She smiled too, though it was clear that she was out of practice. “No bridges,” she assured him. “I promise.”
Captain Will Decker
U.S.S. Enterprise
“I respect an officer who is prepared to admit ignorance and ask a question rather than one who, out of pride, will blunder blindly forward.”
Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
DIANE DUANE
At first glance, the idea of doing a story about Will Decker as captain of the Enterprise might strike you as odd. After all, in the first motion picture he was captain for a matter of minutes, before losing the center seat to Jim Kirk.
Still, Kirk recommended Decker for the position, so there must have been something to the man, something in his nature that allowed Kirk to trust him with his ship and crew.
In the following story, Diane explores a captain’s love affair with his ship, and his affection for the crew. You get an insight into the refit and how everything pieces together.
By now it is obvious that Star Trek authors are also fans, and they like things to be tidy and orderly. Note how the April story set the stage for the events depicted in the episode “Conscience of the King.” Other elements in stories throughout this volume either foreshadow events we have come to know and love or speculate how certain things got established in the Star Trek universes
Diane hasn’t written in this universe for a while, mostly because she’s been busy crafting tales in her own worlds or visiting other people’s universes. The Ireland-based writer is enjoying renewed interest in her Young Wizards series of novels since they are usually found on bookstore displays with the sign, “If you liked Harry Potter, we suggest you try…” And we second the recommendation.
Night Whispers
He sat there in the center seat and looked at the viewscreen. It was blank.
Will Decker sighed, for about the thirtieth time that day, and tapped the control on the arm of the center seat. “Scotty…”
“Still nothing?” said Scotty’s voice, from somewhere down in the bowels of engineering.
“Nothing.”
“It’s a’ this bloody redundant circuitry,” Scotty said, sighing too. “Sometimes I think it should be made redundant in the old sense of the word.”
“Look, Scotty,” Will said. “Why don’t you knock off for the night? It’s probably some obscure command buried in that new LCARS systems that’s causing the trouble. We’ll get the computer to help us do a track-and-trace on the circuitry in the morning, maybe get a better handle on the image-versus-sound problem.”
“If you’re tryin’ to tell me that that dim heap of wires can get a better handle on this problem than I can—”
“Never,” Will said. “Perish the thought. But you’re worn out, Scotty: finally solving that damned intermix problem has to have added a few gray hairs.”
“Aye, well, ‘solved’ is a dangerous word. We’ll see how it runs when we throw the switch in a few weeks,” Scotty said, “and all the other integrated systems are running too. Mind you, I wouldn’t say no to another month’s worth of simulations.”
Will smiled. That was Scotty to the bone, always reluctant to risk the machinery itself until the simulations were perfect. We should be grateful he wasn’t looking over the Creator’s shoulder at the start of things, Will thought; we’d still be waiting for the Bang while Scotty ran just one more test cycle on the Cosmic Egg….
“Well enough,” Scotty said. “What about you?”
“What about what?”
“Beggin’ the captain’s pardon, but it’s well into what would be gamma shift, if we were running shifts yet, and you’re due for a wee bit o’ downtime yourself, I’d say.”
“No,” Will said, standing up and stretching. “I’ll take a turn around before I go off.”
“I thought Doctor Chapel had a word with you about all these late nights you’ve been doing,” Scotty said, rather reproachfully.
So much for medical confidentiality, Will thought. But this ship had always more routinely functioned as a family than as one of the more narrowly defined sorts of organization—and i
n families, tales got told.
“Well,” Will said, “I might just see her too before I go off. See how sickbay’s looking now that the physical imaging hardware’s finally in.”
“Had a look at that myself earlier,” Scotty said. “It’s a bonny piece of design, the new imaging center.”
“So Christine said yesterday. I’ll have a look at it. Meanwhile, Scotty, go get some rest. The screen and the sensor array will keep till tomorrow. It’s not like anything’s going to sneak up and attack us in spacedock.”
Scotty chuckled at that. “Aye lad, well enough. But get your sleep too. I want to get the viewscreen sorted out in the morning … no good having all these sensors and still having to send someone out to stand on the hull with a camera to see what’s there….” And a pause. “Now there’s a thought. If the external sensor interface was—”
“Scotty.”
“No, lad, listen, if the gamma-welding lads jostled the—”
“Scotty. Go to bed. That is an order. This is your Captain speaking!!”
A snort. “There you go pullin’ rank on your elders again, you young whelp. It’s all the Academy’s fault, they…”
Will laughed and punched the communicator button. The link went dead.
He sat back in the center seat and let out another long breath, looking at the screen that, even if it were working properly, wouldn’t show him much, except for the surrounding structure of spacedock and the great globed jewel of Earth underneath it. Maybe Scotty was right to tease him about the hours he’d been spending aboard Enterprise since the refit started. But it was rare enough for a ship’s captain to have such an opportunity—to see the ship all the way through from her reconception as an upgraded vessel, through the refit itself, and out the other side. Will would know his new ship as few captains ever had the leisure to … and when things went wrong later, he would be in a unique position to do something about them.
Meanwhile, Will’s main job was dealing with the day-to-day frustrations of a refit that always presented problems no one had suspected. The frustrations receded, though, in the evenings, when the ship emptied out. Evenings were the best time—the time when Will had time to wander around, getting to know the ship, listening to the echoes, wondering what new ones would replace them when the refit was done.
Star Trek: Enterprise Logs Page 13
